Idaho in search of solutions for foster kids

Some children have complex needs. And when those children are wards of the state, it can make it harder to find families to foster them.

Over the past year and a half, Idaho has seen an increase in foster children who are difficult to place, because of health conditions, developmental disabilities, and sometimes just because they’re teenagers and families prefer babies, according to Cameron Gilliland, administrator of family and community services at the Department of Health and Welfare.

Those kids still need a place to sleep, so the state has been renting short-term rentals, such as Airbnbs, and staffing them to make sure the children have a place to stay. The number of rentals needed has continued to increase, Gilliland said.

“Now we have six rentals, and that’s too many to really handle,” he said. “... it’s not cost-effective to have six different homes.”

Since last November, 179 foster kids in Idaho were placed in short-term rentals. The department said the short-term rentals and the 24-hour staffing costs around $200,000 per month.

But as of recently, the state may have found a new facility. In the next few months, the state hopes to be using a vacant assisted living facility to house some of these kids and provide the treatment and services they need in one place.

The health department is also working to repurpose a wing of a juvenile corrections facility in Lewiston into an appropriate place to house these kids. However, this may take a lot of time to be move-in ready.

“We’ve got to change that so that it doesn’t feel like a prison,” Gilliland said. “It needs to feel like a good placement for them ... they’re not criminals, they’re victims.”

The children in the foster system have usually experienced a significant amount of trauma, having been removed from unsafe situations in their families. Some of them require residential mental health treatment, but there are only so many beds available statewide — these are the kids that may be in an Airbnb for a couple of weeks until something opens up.

Other kids have had behavioral problems or run-ins with the juvenile correction system.

“These are foster kids,” Gilliland said. “They’ve all come from a situation where they had parents and that situation became unsafe.... If you can imagine, that’s a stressful situation for any child or any family, so a lot of these kids have a lot of trauma and history of that.”

Between 15 and 28 children at any time are in the rentals, he said.

This isn’t ideal for the kids, and it also stretches the staff thin. Kids can’t spend the night without supervision, and sometimes staff from other divisions in the department are trained and pulled into the position of watching them, Gilliland said.

The new facility will be licensed and staffed with professionals.

Eventually, the department will look to hire a clinician and education liaison to ensure the kids’ health and educational needs are being met.

Idaho isn’t alone in facing challenges with placing its foster youth. National Public Radio reported in June that the nation is facing a critical shortage of foster families, as fewer families remain in the system and more children enter it.

Idaho has more than 1,500 foster children in its system as of this month, Gilliland said, and the state is always looking for more families.

“We are looking for people to want to make a difference,” he said. “You really can’t make much bigger of a difference in this world than by taking in a foster child and helping change the trajectory of their life.”

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.