I-TEAM: DCFS brings facility online to prevent housing kids in hotels

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has opened a temporary housing facility to make room for kids in their care who do not have another option.

This comes as the agency has tried to find a solution after some kids had to stay at the office and even at area hotels. The facility is right next to Forest Heights Academy of Excellence is now open and ready to take foster kids who need somewhere to go in an emergency situation. It can take up to 16 kids and DCFS Secretary, Terri Ricks, says it will be a game changer.

“Even if a child’s placement disrupts or we have to take custody at 1:00 a.m., that facility is available to us to be able to place that child,” said Ricks.

In many cases, when children are taken into care but do not have a place to go, some have had to stay at the DCFS office under extreme circumstances while others have had to stay in those area hotels. In fact, since March 2023, the head of the agency tells the WAFB I-TEAM roughly 150 kids who had no other options racked up 1,876 hotel stays.

WAFB’s Scottie Hunter asked the Secretary how dire is it for the agency to have recorded that number of hotel stays.

“Any child that’s not in a safe and stable placement is dire and so the fact that we’ve been really working through that the entire year trying to make sure that that number gets to zero, that’s what we’ve been working on and I can report to you for the last couple of nights that that number has been zero,” said Ricks.

The Secretary says the biggest asset of the new facility is it’s not just a place to put them, it’s a one-stop-shop filled with different resources to help each child that walks through the doors.

”If we can’t find immediately a placement, then the staff on site will be able to help them find placement, have their own room for a while and see the counselor that’s on site,” said Ricks. “It really makes me very happy to know that it’s not just a place to stay like the hotel was. It is wrapped with services for the children.”

Had this option been in place, Ricks believes those hotel stays could have been avoided. Statewide, there are just 1,620 foster homes that are ready to receive kids. When compared to the 4,100 kids in care at any given time, it’s clear why the agency always need more options.

”There are more than 4,000 children in Louisiana who have been removed from their family and they are in need of someone else taking care of them. That really kind of puts a lot of pressure on the open homes to maybe take more than they would like to take right now and so that’s how we end up with some without placements,” said Ricks.

To reduce that pressure, the agency has launched the Be There campaign to try and reach more hearts to get more folks interested in fostering, or at least helping out.

“We really have been trying to put tools together to help people figure out these things about how to help one another without us being involved and yet we want to be a resource and so that’s why Be There helps people find themselves in that space of how can I be there for children and families,” said Ricks.

While they are working constantly to fill those needs, the Secretary says their priority is to make sure kids do not have to come into care in the first place. By injecting different services like counseling in area communities, the goal is to anticipate needs before it leads to a problem that forces the state to step in.

Anyone who would like to become a foster caregiver or at least learn more about the program can register for an upcoming information session at the Be There website.

LINK: https://www.dcfs.louisiana.gov/page/foster-adopt-register

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