By Cathy Candisky for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan reporting for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

Twice in the last year, Zoey, a 16-year-old in foster care, had to spend the night in the Franklin County Children Services office.

She had nowhere else to go.

"It was bad," recalled the soft-spoken Zoey, a stuffed bunny clutched under her arm. "It wasn't scary. It was just uncomfortable."

Zoey, who asked to be identified by only her first name, ate canned ravioli and camped out on a sofa in a windowless visitation room she shared with another girl.

"We didn't watch TV. We just sat here staring at each other," Zoey said. "How do you sleep on this hard couch and a pillow that was flat?

"We stayed in here and we did nothing."

Across Ohio, a shortage of foster families, group homes, residential treatment facilities and other placements has overwhelmed child welfare agencies. Frequently, it means youth in their custody are housed in offices, hospital emergency rooms and other ill-suited places for days, weeks and sometimes longer.

In the year ending June 2022, 503 children in foster care spent at least one night in county government offices across Ohio, according to a state report. Dozens more youth stayed in hospitals even though they weren't sick and there was no medical reason for them being there.

Child welfare officials say it's the last option for already traumatized kids with severe behavioral health issues and developmental disabilities. There simply are not enough places offering the treatment they need.

"Residential facilities have been serving children with less significant needs and the children that we are left placing are those that have very deep-end type of issues and significant traumas that have been repeatedly occurring throughout their lives," said Donna Seed, director of social services at Lucas County Children Services.

"They [have] issues that can range from delinquency to gang issues to significant developmental delays to ranges on the autism spectrum, or even medical issues."

Kellijo Jeffries, director of Portage County Job and Family Services, recently was unable to find placement for an 11-year-old girl with developmental disabilities who sometimes was aggressive as well as two youth who had attempted suicide.

Foster families, group homes and treatment facilities commonly share when they deny placement that the youth's needs are too great, or they don't have appropriate services or enough staff to meet the child's need, Jeffries said. "Until we have capacity and the right facilities and options for these kids, we're going to continue to spin."

In the case of the youth with developmental disabilities, her placement provider took the child to the hospital when she wouldn't go to sleep, started banging her head and refused her medication. The placement provider then notified the agency that it could not take her back because of insufficient staff and her aggressive behavior.

The two youth who had recently attempted suicide were discharged from a Northeast Ohio hospital, but because the agency could not secure immediate placement, despite collaborative efforts with county and state agencies, both children remained in the hospital for days after discharge.

The system not only is failing these youth, it's compounding their problems, said Angela Sausser, executive director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio.

"This kid is being told essentially that you're not wanted. No one wants you. You can't be with your family. They may not want you because of your behaviors, or can't take care of you because of your behaviors, and now nobody else wants you and you're stuck in this cold government agency eating takeout and showering at the YMCA. Children experience trauma from being removed from their own homes. By not having a placement option readily available, we are just adding to the child's trauma."

Nearly 15,000 youth are in state custody and about a fourth of them have complex issues including mental illness, developmental disabilities, and kids from the juvenile justice system, some involved in felony-level crimes.

Approximately 1 in 4 of youth in state custody are there for these other reasons, with no history of abuse and neglect. Sausser said it's time to ask why children services has become the "system of last resort" when other systems cannot meet the needs of these youth.

Foster children's health care is covered by Medicaid while they are in custody. Medicaid is required to meet their physical, developmental, and mental health needs, but while screening and diagnosis for behavioral health conditions is common among foster youth, appropriate and available treatment for those with aggressive behaviors resulting from mental illness, developmental disabilities or trauma is in short supply.

Caseworkers say the number of youth needing intensive, long-term treatment has grown, making it harder to find a foster family or group home to take them. The longer kids wait for placement, the longer they wait for treatment, and for many youth their conditions worsen.

"It is truly additional trauma. It can worsen acute symptoms," Dr. Katherine Junger, associate medical director of mental and behavioral health for Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, said of kids stuck at the hospital.

"It leaves them feeling helpless and hopeless and, quite frankly, rejected and removed from society."

The nation's largest pediatric psychiatric unit with 100 inpatient beds, Cincinnati Children's had 22 youth in its emergency room waiting for placement in April. Another 22 children remained in inpatient beds because appropriate home- or community-based treatment was unavailable.

The inpatient unit is designed for short-term crisis stabilization where youth stay five to seven days before they are discharged and moved to long-term care.

When forced to stay longer, Junger said, "they can actually get sicker while they're in the hospital because they're at this level of care that is inappropriate for their needs but it's where they can be safe until we can find a better place for them to be."

Next: "Someone is going to end up very hurt and [my child] is going to be scarred for life by something she can't come back from."


Cathy Candisky wrote this article for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio.


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A bill in Congress with a Connecticut House sponsor aims to reduce child labor in the United States.

Called the "Children Harmed in Life-Threatening or Dangerous Labor Act," its aim is to strengthen current child labor laws and increase civil penalties for companies violating them. And the bill puts a new wrinkle on protections: It allows the Secretary of Labor to label goods produced with child labor, and to issue a 'stop work' order for any person violating child labor laws.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the bill's House sponsor, described its importance.

"This is in response to industry, to have more workers -- more than likely who are underpaid -- and that they can get cheap labor for doing the jobs that they are doing, and taking risks with children," DeLauro explained. "There is a labor shortage, so they're looking to children."

The Economic Policy Institute reported 10 states introduced or passed bills rolling back child labor protections in the last two years.

The Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division concluded almost 1,000 investigations, uncovering child labor violations, an 88% increase since 2019. The bill has been introduced in both chambers of Congress.

Ultimately, the goal is to have stiffer penalties in place for companies that ignore child labor laws. DeLauro acknowledged backers of the bill expect some opposition, most likely from states rolling back protections and industries using underage workers.

"We've got a very strong meat packing industry -- I mention Tyson, JBS, Turkey Valley Farms -- and Packers Sanitation Services provides cleaning services at these meat processing facilities," DeLauro outlined. "I'm going to anticipate that we're going to see industry come out of the woodwork in opposition."

Some companies are already being held accountable with civil penalties. A meatpacking plant owned by Tennessee-based Monogram Meats Snacks was fined a little more than $140,000 for employing children. However, the company made more than $1 billion in 2021.

When a Texas woman began her six-year journey to adopt, she hoped to affect one child's life.

Felicia Lewis, an adoptive parent, is now making a difference in the lives of three young sisters. After considering adoption for years, Lewis and her partner Ruth were introduced to the three girls, all recently displaced from their birth parents.

She encouraged those considering adoption to "get involved to change a life and see how it impacts yours."

"These are children, and it's really important because you're going to be shaping their future, shaping their minds, shaping how they view the world," Lewis pointed out. "It is critical that people are just invested in it."

November is National Adoption Month. Lewis works for Bank of America, ranked among the "Top 100 Best Adoption Friendly Workplaces" by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The connection helped pay the adoption legal fees through Bank of America's Family Planning Reimbursement program.

Over several years, Lewis and her partner built a deep connection to the children and finally saw their petition to foster with the intention to adopt granted in 2020. The process was finalized in August. Lewis noted she received an outpouring of support and encouragement from work colleagues to adopt her three daughters, now ages 6, 8 and 9.

"We walked into this thinking that we were helping them," Lewis recounted. "We're going to give them a better life, a better future, a better home, etc. And we certainly did all that, but they gave us such a better perspective on being better human beings."

Lewis added those considering adoption should not take it lightly, because it is an intense process.

"Agencies, the government, etc., they want to make sure the children are going to a safe home; that they're going to a place they can be cared for," Lewis emphasized. "There's a process, so just be patient, and know that it may not happen overnight, and you might have to try, try and try again. But in the end, it is so well worth it."

The average paid leave given to adoptive parents is 9 weeks - up from 8.4 weeks last year.

Lawmakers in Congress are facing mounting pressure from corporate lobbyists to pass business tax breaks before the end of the year but new analysis suggests cuts would be far more costly than promised.

Joe Hughes, federal policy analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said reinstating the expanded Child Tax Credit would be a better investment. He pointed out it is unclear whether corporate tax breaks would achieve their stated policy goals, but they would make a lot of very rich people even richer.

"The child tax credit, on the other hand, the beneficiaries and the effects are entirely clear," Hughes asserted. "It's children in low- to middle-income families, middle-class families, people making less than about $86,000 a year."

Reinstating the pandemic-era Child Tax Credit would help nearly 60 million children in Wyoming and across the U.S. Proponents of corporate tax breaks passed in 2017 argue they are essential to economic growth and should be made permanent. Critics of the expanded child tax credit, which expired last year doubling child poverty rates, warned it would discourage people from re-entering the workforce.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the expanded Child Tax Credit did not affect parents' decisions to enter or leave the workforce. Hughes noted working is not free if you have children. For many parents, it is less expensive to stay home than pay rising child care costs.

"An expanded child tax credit that's available to all low-income families can actually help some families re-enter the workforce," Hughes emphasized. "Because now they can receive child care."

Making corporate tax breaks permanent is projected to cost $500 billion but Hughes stressed making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable, where families get assistance even if they don't earn enough to owe taxes, would have a much lower price tag of between $10 billion and $20 billion.

"The most impactful part of the legislation was what made it available to all families, including very low-income families," Hughes added. "In 2021, as a result of the child tax credit, child poverty was cut in half."


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