Close to Home: A win for bureaucrats; a loss for Sonoma County kids

A teenaged boy (I'll call him 'Tony') couldn't sleep on Sunday night. Along with 15 other kids, he had just been told that he no longer has a place to stay at the Children's Village. 'I feel really anxious,' Tony told me. 'They told us we had only 10 days before we had to leave. I don't know where I will go.'

To understand more, just see The Press Democrat story on Saturday ('Struggling children's village to shut').

While the immediate reason given for the imminent closing of the village is a financial shortfall, (nearly 25 percent of the $2 million annual budget has to be made up by local fundraising,) the real threat to the village and other group homes in the state is the state's decision to close nearly all juvenile group homes in California.

It is the state's contention that group homes cost too much and do not provide the level of family interaction provided by foster care in individual homes. Many social workers and advocates for youth would readily agree that kids removed from their homes because of parental abuse or neglect are better off being placed in foster homes.

But what happens when there are not enough adequate foster homes for the youth needing this level of care? What about teenage kids who are particularly hard to place? Or when we are dealing with several siblings who are removed from the same abusive home?

Placement in licensed youth group homes has always been default for wards of the court who could not find a suitable foster home. Group homes are regulated by the Community Care Licensing Agency and, in Sonoma County, are also inspected by the Juvenile Justice Commission to assure that the children are safe and well cared for.

But Sonoma County's Children's Village was founded to do much more. The mission of the village was and is to keep the children entrusted to them not only safe and secure but in a home-like setting with house parents. Older people who live on site and provide a grandparent presence add another touch of normality for kids displaced from their families of origin. The vision has always been to create a community, not an institution, where abused and neglected kids could be nurtured.

The village, unlike most group homes, also made it a priority to accept families of siblings. Brothers and sisters were kept together instead of being parcelled out to separate foster families.

Because of the unique vision of the Children's Village, there is all the more reason to keep this facility open.

Meanwhile, the state should take a good hard look at its policy of eliminating group homes in the state. Yes, it may make for financial savings, but at whose expense?

Children such as Tony are not delinquent kids. They have done nothing wrong. Rather they have been wronged by neglectful or abusive parents. The new state policy in my opinion is treating a significant number of these hard-to-place kids as so much collateral damage. Put yourself in the place of Tony. He had a safe place to stay. Now he doesn't know where he will be. What if he were your kid?

Well, you know something? He is your kid — and mine. We are family. It's time to write your state senator or assembly member and ask them to do right by our kids.

Hank Mattimore, a Santa Rosa resident, was a village grandpa at the Children's Village for five years. He also served as a commissioner for the Sonoma County Juvenile Justice Commission for 10 years and is a volunteer at Juvenile Hall.