A treatment-first approach
The Chronicle’s investigation of the unreasonable arrests of abused and neglected children in California’s residential foster care shelters has spurred calls for change in Sacramento.
Last month Assemblyman Mike Gipson, D-Carson (Los Angeles County) introduced a bill, AB2605, which would impose a three-year moratorium on arrests for minor offenses in foster care shelters and group homes. The Chronicle’s investigation showed that children in these facilities were being cited, arrested and detained for offenses as minor as food fights or disputes over play equipment.
Now Gipson is introducing a three-year budget proposal to ensure that foster care facilities won’t have to call law enforcement — because they’re able to redirect traumatized children into alternative treatment for their difficult behavior.
Gipson’s two measures are designed to be complementary. It’s easy enough to say that the staff at state facilities shouldn’t be calling the cops on the children whom they’ve been charged with protecting. But abused and neglected children often act out, and staff members often feel overwhelmed.
It’s not an acceptable first response for staff to call law enforcement when children are behaving badly — but for those who feel like they have no other choices, it’s an understandable one.
Gipson’s budget request is about providing staff members with other options.
The additional $22.7 million in state funding will expand training for shelter staff, law enforcement and others who serve foster youth so they know about alternatives to arrest within their local communities.
The funding will also bolster the communitybased organizations that work to reverse children’s traumatic symptoms and behaviors — so that they have the capacity to help more kids.
Gipson wants these organizations to have enough funding to offer the foster children mental health services, as well as age-appropriate therapeutic outlets.
Taken together, the two measures form a smart plan.
Simply forbidding the foster care facilities to use a punitive practice is less likely to be successful than simultaneously offering staff alternatives to incarceration.
Bolstering local organizations so they have more capacity to serve will be good for foster kids, good for law enforcement and good for entire communities. AB2605 should pass, and so should Gipson’s budget request.