Bringing the Children Home

A D.R.E.A.M. Team Hopes to Build a Dream Home for the County's Wandering Foster Children

 BY TRACY IDELL HAMILTON

As Michael talks, he keeps face obscured from the camera recording his tale.

"I started going to group homes about a year and a half ago," Michael (not his real name) tells the camera. "The first one they sent me to was awful. The kids were all gangsters, and they all had to represent something. It's really hard when you got all these kids pushing you [around and] saying 'What do you represent?' or 'Are you white power?'"

Michael, a SLO teen who was removed from his home by Child Protective Services, was pulled out of that Fresno County group home only to end up in another one in Riverside County.

"I worked that program the best I could, but it seemed like it wasn't the right place for me. The home was meant for kids that have chemical dependencies, and I…it wasn't for me. I rebelled against that."

That rebellion landed Michael back in the county, but he doesn't know for how long. He's now sitting in Juvenile Hall, waiting for a placement, another of SLO County's forgotten children–one of the hundreds of babies, kids, and teens that are cycled through the overburdened, undercompensated foster care system every year.

"If I could change one thing–" he pauses. "The whole system is definitely about placement. It seems like they kinda [place kids] wherever is good for the county."

While it's probably not true that county social workers place foster kids based on what's "good for the county," it is true that there is a severe shortage of places to put these kids at all.

SLO County, mirroring a national trend, doesn't have nearly enough foster families to care for the children removed from their homes once it's determined that home is not safe. There are not enough homes for either emergency placement or long-term care. Nor does the county have enough group home beds for the overflow. It is a shortage of crisis proportions, with little relief in sight.

"Foster care" is an umbrella term for out-of-home, government-run substitute care, including care in foster families, group homes, and other institutions. Although some mandates and funding come from the federal government, foster care is largely left up to states and counties. According to Time magazine, which just wrapped up a yearlong investigation into foster care nationwide ("The Shame of Foster Care," Nov. 13), more than 560,000 children are in the country's foster care systems–almost double the number of just five years ago.

The nation's taxpayers spend between $7 and $12 billion annually on this system, not including such indirect costs as caring for former foster children, who make up a disproportionate number of welfare recipients. More than 15,000 children will leave the system this year without permanent families, booted the day they turn 18.

And while the national mandate is to try to reunite children with their families by whatever means necessary–substance abuse counseling, parenting skills classes, financial help–the reality is that the majority of children will neither be reunited nor permanently adopted. The track record for reuniting these children with their families has been poor, and there’s evidence that among those children who are reunited with their families or even permanently adopted, return rates are staggering.

In September of this year, 668 SLO County children were in foster placement with a relative or a foster family or in a group home.

Those who cannot be placed locally must be shipped out of the county–some even go out of state. Right now, almost 50 local kids are living out of the county, all at great taxpayer expense. In addition to the cost of the group homes themselves, which can run as high as $8,000 per child per month, the county must pay for staff and parental travel to visit the children. Being far away also means these kids have a harder time reuniting with parents or getting adopted, lengthening stays and increasing costs further.

Now representatives of the many county agencies that deal with this population, led by one woman's vision and indefatigable efforts, are offering their support for an alternative that could keep costs down, keep kids here in one stable environment, and give those kids some basic life skills.

Conceptualizing the D.R.E.A.M.

When people describe Sandy Oneal-Kane, they use words like "spark plug" and "firecracker." A SLO County businesswoman, Oneal-Kane has a quick smile and seemingly boundless energy. She has devoted the last year and a half–the last nine months of that pregnant with her second child–to D.R.E.A.M. for Kids, her collaborative vision for a self-contained group home that would allow SLO County's least-adoptable foster children to remain here, in a loving, homelike setting.

Neither a foster parent nor a former foster child, Oneal-Kane stumbled upon the world of foster care when she was looking for a community charity to support. It has haunted her ever since.

"This system is failing," she says. "And we are failing our kids. These are our kids, our community's children. We have a responsibility to them."

Indeed, while the costs of shipping these children out of the county may be high, the costs to society of foster kids who turn 18 and are let loose in the world after an unstable life, with little love and fewer skills, is even higher. Studies show that former foster kids are at far greater risk of becoming criminals, ending up in jails and prisons, being abused, getting pregnant, or becoming homeless.

The more Oneal-Kane learned, the more outraged she became. She began reaching out to people who work with this population, setting up meetings, trying to figure out ways the system could be improved. At first, as social workers and others tried to explain the intractability of the system, she was met with polite skepticism.

Finally, Oneal-Kane said, "I asked them, if money and bureaucratic red tape weren't an issue, what would be your dream?"

Social workers painted a picture of a high-level group home for the kids who are hardest to place. These are "Level 14" kids, so designated because their needs are higher than average. Level 14 kids have often suffered the most serious abuses, and been batted around the system for years. Their educations have been disrupted and their mental and physical health care needs are high. The dream was that this group home would provide a place where these children could stay put, get a basic education, and learn some life skills, some job skills. The campus would have on-site medical and school facilities, and gardens and animals, and a small staff kids could bond with.

"That's why we've called this D.R.E.A.M.," Oneal-Kane says. The acronym stands for Discovering, Reaching, Embracing Aspirations for the Millennium. The "for Kids" was added to distinguish the group's efforts from other dream-monikered movements.

It was about this time that Oneal-Kane met Christine Cornejo, who would eventually become D.R.E.A.M.'s co-chairwoman. Cornejo, an artist who works for the city of SLO, is a former foster child.

A Dream Deferred

At age 3, Cornejo and her older brothers were taken into protective custody after her oldest brother was caught stealing potatoes for his siblings to eat. Her father suffered from depression and alcoholism. Her mother, after having her father committed, began drinking and was unable to care for her children.

The next 15 years were hellish. Cornejo and her brothers were repeatedly separated. Cornejo herself would move 17 times, into seven different homes. To cope, she became one of the quiet ones, a "good" girl, hoping that one day she would be adopted by that mythical family that would take her, love her, make her life whole.

It never happened.

She said the homes where she lived would sometimes have "adoption parties."

"It was like being at the dog pound," she says, her voice barely betraying anguish as she recalled her desperation to be adopted. Cornejo says not getting chosen threatened to quash what little self-esteem she had left. She was hyperaware that chances of finding a permanent family dwindled the older she got. "People want the cute little babies and toddlers," she says.

One of the lucky ones, Cornejo broke the cycle herself, becoming emancipated at age 16, then working nights to finish high school. "I basically never looked back at that point," she said.

She wouldn't look back for another 20 years. Her experiences may have permanently scarred her relationship with at least one brother. "He refuses to contact us," she said. The other, after years of succumbing to crime and drugs, lives quietly and soberly alone. He too is an artist.

After facing her past, Cornejo wanted to give something back. She became a volunteer CASA, a court-appointed special advocate, for children in the foster care system. CASAs try to ensure that children who are taken from their families and become wards of the court get the services they need, whether medical attention, a special education classification, or counseling.

She volunteered for three years before burning out in frustration over a system that she says has not changed appreciably in 30 years. "I came out with a real hatred for the system," she says. "I felt like my hands were always tied." Meeting Oneal-Kane, Cornejo decided to try again.

Together the two women have expanded the dream even further. They imagine the home’s expanding to accept less-troubled children, younger children, children who could stay in one place while they tried to reunite with their parents. They imagine cottages for young adults transitioning out of the system. They imagine the campus as a model for other communities, as a way to break the vicious foster care cycle.

The idea is not unique. In Ventura County, a public-private partnership has created Casa Pacifica, a successful group home and emergency shelter that treats not only that county's children, but many from neighboring counties, including SLO.

According to Executive Director Steve Elson, the campus, which is funded by a variety of federal, state, and local sources both public and private, has 28 residential treatment beds and 35 shelter beds. "We're almost always full," Elson said.

While they have a model, and the support of almost every organization and agency that works with these children, including Probation, law enforcement, Mental Health, Social Services, and the County Office of Education, the D.R.E.A.M. team still has a long way to go before their dream becomes a reality.

Finding a Home for the Dream

First on the D.R.E.A.M. to-do list is to acquire land suitable for building the group home. Oneal-Kane and Cornejo believe they have found such a spot in the former Phillips Ranch School, located about 8 miles east of Paso Robles in the Whitley Gardens community. The tiny, quaint schoolhouse, which sits on about 10 acres of land, is owned by the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District. Oneal-Kane would like to see the Board of Supervisors buy the land, which she says has been appraised at about $200,000.

Although the district currently rents one of the outbuildings on the property to the Shandon School District, Paso Superintendent Patrick Sayne said it’s a year-to-year lease. While he supports the concept of a group home for the county's children, he says the possible land deal needs to be studied further.

Sayne said he remembers water and sewage concerns when the district looked at using the site for a new school several years back. He also noted that no one has looked at the deed in many years. "It could have restrictions placed on it restricting its usage," something not uncommon with public school land, he said.

D.R.E.A.M. has taken their request to the County Board of Supervisors, but Oneal-Kane said they're having a hard time getting support. Even if the supes aren't ready to sign a check, she said, if the county was given the first right of refusal to buy the land, that would be enough. "I can't understand why they wouldn't want this," she says. "Even if for some reason this never came to fruition, the county would still end up owning a piece of prime land, land whose value will surely continue to rise." She noted that the Ventura County Board of Supervisors stepped up with $4 million for Casa Pacifica.

Recently, Supervisor Mike Ryan agreed to meet with members of the D.R.E.A.M. team on Nov. 20 to take a look at the numbers. Along with Supervisor Harry Ovitt, Ryan will meet with Oneal-Kane and representatives from Social Services, Mental Health, and Probation.

A pragmatist, Ryan's main concern is whether the whole thing will pencil out for the county. He said he wants to see some cold, hard numbers showing just how much the county would save, and how long it would be until it would see those savings after what are sure to be high capital costs.

Ryan noted that much of the money spent to care for these kids out of the county already comes from federal and state sources. The county pays about 15 percent of the total, according to Department of Social Services, so the savings may not be justified in a county that has many pressing needs. "There's not even a price tag for phases three or four," he said, referring to the eventual addition of cottages and expanded services for other levels. "They're going to have to tie some real numbers to this." The $200,000 figure is only a beginning, he said. He wants to see cost projections for the entire vision.

Some of those real numbers were projected back in June in an office memo to the manager of the county's Child Welfare Services Unit. According to that memo, the Department of Social Services could save almost $27,000 per year per child–a conservative figure.

Ryan said he also wondered about the need for such a home in the county. He noted that the population of Ventura County is different from SLO County. "We're mostly middle class here," he said. "Ventura County is more ethnically diverse, and as a more urban center, has more lower-class [people]." Ryan's conception of who foster children are, and where they come from, is one of the many myths surrounding these kids.

Myths Clouding the Dream

According to Social Services, most of the foster children in this county–and the nation generally–are middle class and white, although black children are disproportionately represented in foster care systems nationwide.

Oneal-Kane says she's trying very hard not to be political, "but it makes me angry when I hear that. The perception of foster kids is that they're someone else's problem, that they are bad kids. These kids are victims. These are our kids, and we have a responsibility to take care of them right here. Someone on the Board of Supervisors needs to show some guts."

Cornejo said even the children themselves often feel like they are the bad ones, especially when they're taken away from their homes in police cars. "You just wonder, ‘What have I done?’" And while some kids certainly do come to foster care through the criminal justice system, the vast majority are pulled from their family homes because of parental abuse or neglect.

Supervisor Shirley Bianchi says she is a strong supporter of the D.R.E.A.M. concept, more so after seeing the foster care system up close. An adopted member of Bianchi's family spent time in a Level 14 group home hundreds of miles from the family's home. "Keeping in contact with her was very difficult," Bianchi remembers. "Her mother was driving back and forth, back and forth."

In addition to the savings, Bianchi says a local Level 14 group home would facilitate parental visits, which enable children to be placed back in the home.

Her family member's story is a successful one. She is back in her family's home, enrolled in community college and working. "These are not throw-away kids," Bianchi says. "They are not dangerous to others–themselves, perhaps–but I would even support a group home next to my place."

A fear that these kids would bring trouble also pervades the few neighbors surrounding the Phillips school site. Lester Rougeot and his wife Barbara live about a half mile from the school. They say an ongoing drug problem would only get worse with a group home. "I'm against it, and my neighbors are, too," said Rougeot, who has lived in Whitley Gardens since 1946. "They'll get into the drugs that are already out there."

Atascadero Police Chief Dennis Hegwood, who also supports the concept–even if it were placed in Atascadero–said the D.R.E.A.M. team will have to work hard to overcome the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) syndrome. "They're going to have to sell it," he said, "but if they can, the community might really embrace the concept, once they understand. Those opposed just need to look at the facts, rather than base their decisions on emotion." Paso's Police Chief Dan Cassidy also supports the concept.

If the community does embrace this project, which Oneal-Kane thinks many do already, they're going to need to step up to the plate financially.

Show D.R.E.A.M. the Money

D.R.E.A.M. for Kids was always conceived as a public-private partnership, Oneal-Kane said, like Casa Pacifica in Ventura County. While operating costs would come through the same revenue streams that they do now, with a mix of federal, state and local sources, capital costs and extras would be borne by the foundation D.R.E.A.M hopes to become.

In an effort to publicize their cause and raise money, D.R.E.A.M. is throwing a black-tie gala dinner and auction on Jan. 12 at the Cliffs. at Shell Beach. Oneal-Kane says she wants the movers and shakers in the community–mayors, law enforcement people, politicians, and philanthropists–to get dressed up, have a good time, and learn about why a stable group home for the county's kids is necessary.

D.R.E.A.M. has commissioned a video, which will be shown at the dinner, in which current and former foster children tell their stories. Cornejo agreed to be interviewed, as did Alice Newall, a former SLO County foster child who now works as a correctional nurse for juveniles in the criminal justice system.

"The feeling of being warehoused, of being moved all over the place, of being in and out of court, it's just horrible," Newall said. On the other hand, she said she can still remember those moments in her childhood when an adult would come into her life and make her feel wanted and connected. "They shouldn't be moments, you know?" Newall said she is hopeful the dream would come to fruition. "A lot of people are behind this, and it's clear there's a great need."

Also on the video will be children currently in the system, children like Michael, who's been in group homes outside of the county, and Gabe (also not his real name), who has been in the foster care system for five years now. "I've moved foster homes about ten times now," Gabe tells the camera.

To give the event a star-studded edge, Oneal-Kane has enlisted New York Mets third baseman and Central Coast resident Robin Ventura as well as ESPN broadcaster Harold Reynolds as speakers. Also on hand will be Dave Pelzer, the award-winning author of "A Child Called 'It'" and other books recounting his own abuse and subsequent survival thanks to the intervention of the foster care system. SLO Police Chief Jim Gardiner will be the evening's auctioneer. Tickets for the event are $50 each.

Oneal-Kane is incredibly hopeful about pulling this whole thing off, but she admits she's in a bit of a Catch-22, needing a land deal before asking people to donate, and needing people to donate so she can prove to the supes the support is out there so the county will buy the land. A recent call from country radio station KJUG, alerting her that D.R.E.A.M. will be one of four recipients for an upcoming fund-raiser, bolsters her view that, once they understand the great need, residents will enthusiastically back this project.

"People who have never had to think about this, who may never have had to come in contact with this system, would be horrified if they knew what was happening to our kids," Oneal-Kane said. "I know we'll get the support we need, and together I know we can change the system." Æ

Reporter Tracy Idell Hamilton lives for changing systems.