Reform led to a foster-care nightmare

These editorial pages routinely detail the inability of the state and federal governments to solve major problems and even competently handle their basic responsibilities.

We’re reminded of this constantly, whether we’re dealing with infrastructure issues, crime policy or the homelessness crisis. Even when officials have plenty of public money and a sensible strategy, their efforts come up short.

Typically, government failures lead to annoyances, such as higher tax rates than necessary, increased traffic congestion and pothole-filled streets. But when government is involved in social problems, the poor results can impose massive human costs. A new investigative report about the state’s foster-care system falls into the latter category.

Assaults by foster youth in a downtown Los Angeles hotel have renewed attention to a 2015 law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, that was designed to assure that abused children are “cared for in committed nurturing family homes,” as the state Department of Social Services explains. Assembly Bill 403 eliminated the use of group homes except for short-term purposes. Much attention at the time focused on terrible abuses at some of those homes.

The legislation, which passed both houses of the Legislature without any “no” votes, promised foster services “tailored to the strengths and needs of a child and delivered … in a family-based environment.” It was a genuinely well-intentioned effort, but the latest news suggests that it has created disturbing problems — such as warehousing foster youth in temporary facilities.

Basically, the state shuttered group homes without realizing that it would be tough to find enough family-based alternatives. Los Angeles County’s “decision to house foster children in hotels underscores California’s chronic shortage of families and group homes willing or able to house youths with significant untreated trauma and histories of violence,” according to the report in the Los Angeles Times.

The problem isn’t only in California. Congress passed, and President Donald Trump signed, legislation based on California’s model, the report added. As a result, one activist group noted more than 2,000 children had been “improperly held in inappropriate settings, including offices, shelters and psychiatric hospitals.”

It’s yet another example of government taking too broad of a brush — i.e., banning things before coming up with a viable alternative. Essentially, the state decided to reform a troubled system and left an even more troubled system in its wake.

In 2021, Los Angeles County conducted a study of the short-term group homes since the law’s implementation and found “the trauma experienced by youth and staff is not being addressed in a meaningful way” and that “Families are not being included enough in the case-planning and treatment processes, and aftercare supports are inconsistent or lacking.”

The foster-care system in Los Angeles County and elsewhere in California has long been troubled. The situation worsened during the pandemic as the number of foster youth skyrocketed, staff levels fell and family reunification was delayed. The state’s traditional public-school system handled the pandemic poorly — and those problems were magnified in a system responsible for the highest-risk youth.

Whenever the government — with its one-size-fits-all approach, unionized work forces, poor incentive structures and lack of accountability — gets involved in family matters, we can only expect a heartbreaking disaster. Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions here, but the state needs to revisit the 2015 law and start thinking creatively.