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>> Eleven months after a class action lawsuit sought meaningful change in the state's foster care program.

We're now just a few weeks into the deadline for the changes brought about by the settlement agreement.

But have things changed when it comes to foster kids spending the night in offices, cars, and hotel rooms?

Department of Children, Youth, and Families secretary Ross Hunter is here with a progress report next on Northwest Now.

[ Music ] Child welfare is the most difficult nut to crack in state government.

Many of the kids in the state's care are disabled or have faced horrible abuse and neglect.

Meanwhile, the incentives and resources for others to step in and care for them are always in short supply.

The child welfare system has to contend with employee burnout and sidelines filled with angry parents, angry advocates, and frequently, angry youth.

Whose trauma finds them acting out and sometimes pushing away the very people trying to help.

As kids age out of the system, it all results in measurably unfortunate long-term outcomes when it comes to education, substance abuse, mental health, and future employment.

Three years ago, state-remanded children spent just six nights in DCYF offices.

But then that number jumped to 284 nights and then 727, which is what prompted the lawsuit earlier this year.

Combining office and hotel stays, the number of nights spent was up from 824 in 2017 to 1,863 in 2020.

A settlement order prohibited overnight stays in cars and hotels starting on November 1st.

But the system's ombud says part of the problem is that the kids who end up having to spend nights in hotels have severe mental health needs.

Or in some cases, act out violently or sexually against children and staff.

So in the middle of all this is Ross Hunter, who started as the Department's first secretary in 2017 and who remains in a job that many others would have no doubt run from by now.

Ross, thanks so much for coming to Northwest Now.

Discussion about a difficult topic, the child welfare system, very necessary to protect the state's youth, but at the same time, very problematic in terms of execution and making it happen in the right way.

Let's start with the lawsuit that was filed.

We did a little background on this on that prior to this discussion.

November 1 was the date for things to change.

Give us a little bit of a progress report on where you are with things like overnights in cars, hotel rooms.

How is that looking?

>> Well, we've made a lot of progress.

I will say the problem is not 100% fixed.

The progress, I mean, first, we haven't had an office stay in since September 1st, since we filed the plan.

We've made a number of policy changes there.

We've implemented a lot of new practice work about planning so that we have long-term plans that we're doing with the youth, with the youths' family, with the youths' lawyers.

To try and make sure that we have safe, stable, and therapeutic plan for all the youth.

We've done work, significant work, upstream of our problem.

And the problem is we have children who where we don't have a place for them to be for a particular night that is what you would typically think of as a foster home.

Most states have this challenge and many of them have a much larger percentage of their children in group homes than we do.

We have about 4% of our kids in group homes.

Some states are in the 30% range.

>> And some of our group homes have gone away.

They said they don't like the reimbursements.

They don't like the program.

They've walked away.

>> The rates have really been stuck.

We had one big jump in rates, but have been stuck since the last recession well over a decade ago.

And the cost of running the facilities, particularly in high-wage areas, is really challenging.

We are very much experiencing that challenge right now.

As the whole world is short-staffed, so are the private sector.

These are mostly nonprofit group homes.

>> Right, they're novos [assumed spelling], those folks.

>> Right, having an enormous challenge of staffing and the rate model was assuming a $13.50 minimum wage and you can't hire for that.

You can't hire at fast food for that and you certainly can't hire therapists at that.

So what we've done, we've worked with our partner hospitals at Mary Bridge and at Seattle Children's Hospital to try and make sure that children who are on a psychiatric hold in the emergency room.

Aren't just released to foster care because their parents can't manage them.

We're now working with the hospitals and the families to put in place wraparound sets of support so the kid can be with the family.

Kids are better off with their family, almost universally, and so if we can make that happen, it's better for the kid.

It's better for the family.

It's better for the hospital.

The - but we need to make sure we have the mental health support.

We're doing the same work with our detention facilities so that children are not released to foster care, you know, 2:00 in the afternoon, or worse, 2:00 in the morning.

It's like if a kid shows up in a cop car and is dropped off at one of our offices, like what are we going to do?

>> Yeah.

>> So now we're trying to work with our partners in the counties to say let's do some planning when a young person's going to be released from juvenile detention to make sure that they can go home.

What do you need to make the home safe?

Is there a relative that they could live with if they've offended against a sibling?

>> But you need more of those CLIP beds and those BRS beds.

>> So let's get to that first, but let's stop having kids come into the foster care system that don't need to come into foster care, right?

If we can keep a kid in their family, that kid is going to have better mental health, better stability.

Every bit of research says that's better.

>> If it's safe.

>> If it's safe, right?

Most of the kids that we're struggling with are not kids who have experienced - who are in foster care because they've experienced abuse.

They're in foster care because their parents couldn't manage their -- >> Autism, their behavioral -- >> -- their behavioral health.

>> Their behavioral issues.

>> Right, and I don't want to talk about specific diagnosis or specific kids because I think they have a right to privacy.

>> Absolutely.

>> Mostly not their fault.

But we want to make sure that we have - that we keep kids in their families, so this is the short-term prevention work.

That's been a lot of our focus.

The next focus is on let's look at the top nine longest-staying kids in the - who've had the most hotel stays, which is most of the challenge.

And let's have a plan for every single one of those kids.

Of our - and if we do that, we solve almost all of this problem.

>> With the kids who have emergent situations, behavioral difficulties, they need that high-intensity counseling and possibly a little detention thrown in there, too, just to keep them and others safe.

Are they - do we still have kids going out of state or have you been able to reel that all back in-state?

>> We're not - almost all of it's in - back in-state.

When I took office, we had 81 children out of state.

We sent - I sent every single one of my senior executives out to visit every single one of those children.

Our conclusion was that we were not happy with where they were and we brought almost all of those children back.

We have some children who are in a placement that is actually appropriate for them and we now are working - we have to work with the judges to make that happen.

We're - we have fewer than ten children out of state now.

So we're trying to keep kids in-state because it's better for them to be close to their family.

We're trying to - and we are bringing more capacity online.

We brought on some new what we call behavioral rehabilitation service or BRS, some additional beds.

We have a couple of providers that are just about to add new beds.

Most of them are having trouble staffing, right?

And so if we're dependent on nonprofits for this, we're - we have work to do to try and bring that on.

We're also working to get more CLIP beds.

More CLIP beds are about to come online.

These are intensive inpatient psychiatric beds.

It's how we get that, we're also doing - we're working with the Y and some other places to have what I would call supportive living environments.

Where we have a child with a safe and stable housing situation and we will wrap as much behavioral health care around that as possible but that may be more acceptable to the youth.

And the youth can vote with their feet.

I mean, we don't lock children up who have not committed crimes.

>> Yeah, like you said.

They have agency -- >> They have agency.

>> -- and that's another complicating factor sometimes.

That's a difficult philosophical question.

The pendulum has swung back and forth between state-run institutions and let's do everything community-based and the public will step in and house these children.

No, they won't.

There's a right answer in there somewhere.

Do you ever see the state getting back in the facility business at all with CLIP beds, and BRS beds, and taking care of the staffing issues, taking care of the reimbursement issues?

The nonprofits are nice.

It's a great way to be able to do it in a perfect world.

Do you see a need for the state to come back into that at all with facilities, or no, we want to stay away from anything that looks like a facility?

>> In the long run, I would prefer to not run therapeutic facilities.

I don't get to work on problems that have black or white solutions, right?

>> No, you do not.

>> None of my problems are, "Oh, look, just do this," or, "Just do this."

Our problems are in this balancing space in the middle of what's the best choice.

We are absolutely looking at a state-staffed facility as a short-term until some of the nonprofits can get their staffing back.

We may need help with rates from the legislature to make it so that they're able to adequately pay people to do jobs that are really hard to do and require a lot of work.

>> A lot of training, too.

>> A lot of training.

I would prefer to have partnerships with the nonprofit sector, but we also have to come up with a way where all of our children can be housed whatever level of staffing we need to have to do that.

And to have an array of choices that work for everybody.

>> So here's the question.

On the homeless problem, these - the vacant hotels, the facilities that are laying out there built, ready to go, theoretically suitable for human habitation, are sitting there.

You're in this - on this balancing line between institutions and non-institutional living for some of these kids.

Is there a happy medium in there with borrowing something from the homeless model where you can have wraparound services.

They're all right there.

You know where they are.

You know what they're doing.

Or is that not ideal?

>> So let me make sure that we understand the difference here.

When we're talking about the homeless in general, most people are talking about homeless adults.

>> Right.

>> These are children and these children are often very, very vulnerable to predatory behavior by adults, or by other children, but mostly by adults.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children is an enormous problem in this space and we are not going to have a situation where you just put a kid in a room and walk away.

>> Oh, no.

>> Right?

That is not going to turn out well.

You would not do that with your 17-year-old, let alone one that has - is more vulnerable.

So we're not going to do that, either.

So but the core element of that homeless situation that is really interesting here is the Housing First model, is people can't address their deeper challenges until they have a home.

I quote - when we were doing the prep, I talked to you about a line from a Robert Frost poem and I'd urge everyone to read the poem.

But the line is that, "Home is where when you have to go there, they have to let you in."

And that level of stability is an anchor for people's mental health and we want to make sure that we're providing that to young people.

And so it's that can we give them that anchor and then do all the wraparound, do all the other support.

>> I hear you saying they don't need a room, they need a family.

>> They need a family.

>> That's what I hear you saying.

>> Right.

>> Which is a nice segue into foster families.

>> Yep.

>> Perpetual shortage and I've worked in six states.

That is always the case.

>> Yep.

>> Did a big documentary once on family - foster families and the challenges there and it's they're always in short supply.

There are many challenges associated with being a foster family, particularly when you're talking about the additional training needed.

And the additional facilities needed for some of the cases that you're dealing with where you're - the funnel has gotten you down to this group of kids who have very challenging issues.

And it's not just providing a bed, and a meal, and hoping to love their troubles away.

>> Right.

>> It don't work like that.

>> Let's make sure we're - the group of young people we're talking about is a couple dozen, 20-some kids out of 7,000 children in the foster care system.

>> So you need the families for that 7,000.

>> So to run a foster care system, mostly we want to reduce the size of the foster care population by having kids stay home when it's safe or when we can provide supports to a family to have it be safe.

The next step is can we place this child with a relative.

And we've done a lot of work to make that more possible.

We're at about 47% of -- >> A lot of foster families complain about that, though.

You know, "They sent them to a relative.

We don't like the relative.

We're here providing good care."

>> You know what?

And it's an argument that I hear over and over, again.

When, as a foster parent, you love that child.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> That's what - that's why you become a foster parent and you believe that you are the best solution for that child.

I'm a statistician and so my job is to look and say, well, wow.

In almost every situation, children's mental health ten years later is vastly better if they're with a relative.

If they're with a grandma, that grandma may not be able to send them to a private school, right?

But that grandma has a connection.

That's their anchor, right?

>> Yeah, you're looking at outcomes.

>> I'm looking at outcomes and the outcomes, in the long run, is almost always better when you're with a relative.

And so the state law, the federal law, require us in a good way to prioritize relative placements and that is going to break the heart of foster families.

>> Yeah.

>> And if it didn't break the heart of foster families -- >> They're not good foster parents.

>> I don't know why you're in the foster care business.

>> Yeah.

Another one of those dilemmas.

>> It's a middle space and we're going to follow the law and it really is a preference.

I'd like to move that number up.

I don't know what the right answer is, 60, 70-some percent, and that's making sure that those families have the - we should not give $1,000 a month to a stranger to take care of a child.

If we're not willing to give that same amount to the grandma to take care of the child.

When every bit of research says the kid will be better off with the grandma.

Why would we not do that?

So we're trying to license, get - we've done a lot of work to remove barriers to licensure.

So on that and as we shrink the size of the system, we do need foster parents, but we need parents who can deal with children with really challenging behavior.

>> Which is really hard.

>> And we need families - when we look at teens in the foster care system, the number of reputable studies that have looked at this.

Somewhere between a quarter and a third, probably closer to a third of them, self-identify as LGBTQ+, somewhere on the lesbian gay - I'm not sure I can produce every little letter in that sequence.

But some gender fluidity.

I don't know how we get that prevalence.

It's much larger than it is in the population as a whole, but making sure that our families are supportive of the child, where the child is, is really important to us.

It's really important to children.

Again, you look at long-term outcomes, suicide reduction, all - having a supportive family for your core gender expression is absolutely critical.

>> You're about 3,000 families short on the foster care - in the foster - from my back of the napkin calculation, give or take, based on your population looks like.

>> No.

>> Not that many.

>> We have 7,000 children in care.

We have - and of those, about half are in relative placements, so that leaves a total of about 3,500 kids.

I'm not 3,000 short of 3,500.

We continue to have a challenge for hard-to-place children, children who have behaviors that just are challenging.

Where we need a foster family that has a higher level of preparation, and skill, and training.

But -- >> That was my question.

Do you need professional foster families?

Do reimburse - what do you need to make that happen?

Do you need higher reimbursements, professional families who are trained and are laying there ready to take these kids?

>> I think that is something that we've talked about for a long time.

We do something called therapeutic foster care which is very much like that and I think we will probably move - expand that segment of our placement array and that will look like that.

Into saying here's - we need to make this financially feasible for families to do this where it's really a 24/7 obligation, right?

You're on.

>> It's your chance to talk to the legislature.

What do you need?

You've laid out several different things.

At the end of the day, I guess it comes down to funding.

There have been some injections of fundings in the past couple of cycles.

>> Right.

>> Is it enough?

What is your pitch going to be to, as you put it, I think, in our previous discussion that I thought was so good, to get the system from stopping digging?

>> Well, yeah, so if you're in a hole, you should stop digging, right?

>> Yeah, right.

>> What we need to make sure is that the - our rates that we pay at the very high end of need in the system are adequate for our providers to staff.

So if we're trying to hire folks to care for people, we need to pay enough that our providers can attract that staff.

This is true whether it's state run or not.

We run a juvenile rehabilitation system for children in the deep end of the juvenile incarceration system.

And we're challenged to staff because I don't think our salaries are high enough to be competitive, particularly in high-cost markets like King and Pierce County.

>> Which has led to a turnover problem.

>> Which has led to a turnover problem.

>> Talk a little bit about that and what the - why is that turnover happening, and in this discussion, you can certainly hear a lot of the challenges, and then what do you think the solution is?

>> Well, the turnover happens.

Every child welfare agency in the country, probably in the world, has a higher turnover rate.

We reduced our turnover rate pretty significantly when we started by doing some cultural changes in how we managed employee discipline, a bunch of other internal changes.

We got to pay enough that people can say, "I can support my own family here."

And every part of the economy is now finding it hard to hire people at poverty wages.

And child welfare and juvenile rehabilitation are not immune to that.

Our lowest-wage workers, we need to pay enough so that we can hire them and retain them.

>> And a lot of those folks, the caseworkers, the social workers, that you have to have a large population, these are not - these are folks with college degrees.

>> They're folks with college degrees.

>> And with significant experience in early childhood development or later and a lot of those things.

So this - we're not talking about - I want you to make the point - I guess I will make it for you.

We're not talking about making hamburgers here.

>> Nope.

>> This is high intensity, hands on -- >> That's right.

>> -- skills that are needed.

>> And we want employees that are willing to learn, and grow, and get better, and change as the population changes.

The severity of - as we reduced the system in size over the last couple of decades and more acceleratingly in the last four years.

The kids who are - who've experienced very little trauma, who are there just because of neglect, are - we're trying to keep those kids in their home.

So now a higher and higher percentage of the kids that we're working with have more serious challenges.

They've experienced a lot of trauma.

There's very predictable behaviors that we see from that.

And we need to have probably lower caseloads so that we can provide more individual attention to kids so that we can get them out of the system as fast as possible.

>> Yeah, you're at about 25 cases per social worker right now and I think the national average is around 12 or 13.

>> The aspirational goal of all child welfare agencies is to be around 12 or 13.

I don't think you could say that the average is there and we're not at an average of 25.

We're probably closer to 18.

>> Okay.

>> So, yeah.

>> Numbers a little better.

>> Yeah, it varies.

Yeah, it's gotten better.

It varies.

It's a complicated thing about how does turnover affect this.

>> And which populations you're talking about.

There's - yeah.

In our last two minutes here, I'd like you to speak to foster - potential foster families.

If you could get a bunch of foster families in a room who are thinking about it and they said, "Well, maybe we should do that sometime, honey.

What do you think?"

What's your message to them?

What do you tell them?

What do potential foster families and existing foster families who think about it from time to time whether they should be doing it, what do you want to tell them?

>> First, I want to thank them.

I want to thank them for the love that they're expressing for children.

Children need love.

They need - it is the deepest need that human beings have.

And I also need them to be able to provide more than that.

And I'm going to break their heart because if they do the best job that they can do, more than half the time, the child will be reunited with their family.

And that's the best outcome for the child.

>> If the system works, they go away, yeah.

>> Right.

If the system works, they're providing love and care for a child who's with them for a short period of time or a long period of time, and I can't tell you in advance which is which.

So if you're coming in because you're viewing this as a way to adopt, that might work out, but it might not.

And we need you to be willing to do both.

We need you to recognize the child, where the child is, and provide that love and support for the child, and we're deeply thankful for people's willingness to do this.

It is a gift and many people have a religious basis for that gift.

Some people just have a moral personal basis for that.

I don't care where the gift comes from.

>> But you need it.

>> The child needs love and we would like to have the child get that love and support in their family and we'll help support that.

And we really want to have foster families that can help with that and we really appreciate them.

>> Ross Hunter, thanks for coming to Northwest Now.

>> My pleasure.

>> Solutions to these problems come in and out of fashion.

We went from public institutions to private vendors, from high-intensity interventions to family reunification, from centralized facilities to dispersed community-based care models.

And around, and around, and around.

The bottom line, it will take all of those things working in concert to adequately care for this state's foster youth.

And let's face it.

Only topnotch and well-paid social workers, topnotch and well-paid foster parents, and topnotch and well-resourced institutional supports for mental health, education, and job training will work.

Anything short of that will result in damaged kids coming out of the system even more damaged and more likely to have more expensive, suboptimal outcomes later on in life.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

And let me add that if you want more on this topic, check out InvestigateWest continuing coverage of the foster care crisis.

To watch this program, again, or to share it with others, Northwest Now can be found on the web at kbtc.org and be sure to follow us on Twitter @NorthwestNow.

Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest Now.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

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