Starcania Ford’s first call came not too long after she had completed two months of background checks and trainings.
Could she come and pick up a young man waiting at the juvenile delinquency court near downtown Los Angeles?
Ford, 38, who lives with her adult daughter, is the only licensed foster parent for probation youth in L.A. County. She’s part of a state initiative that has seen probation departments across the state jump headlong into the business of finding foster parents. The goal is to keep some probation youth out of lengthy stays in group homes and live instead in family homes.
In 2015, California embarked on a series of reforms to its foster care system with the goal of placing more children with families and fewer in institutional settings, like group homes. Known as Continuum of Care Reform (CCR), that effort has resulted in a $104 million statewide initiative to recruit more caregivers for foster children in counties across the state.
“It’s a challenge to find homes for delinquent teenagers,” said San Luis Obispo probation chief Jim Salio, who is president of the Chief Probation Officers of California. “That’s not really what [caregivers] signed up for when they thought about being foster parents. They’re usually thinking about the younger children when they think about fostering.”
“A lot of people just see probation tag and they think gang members, murderers, rapists,” said Campbell-Motton, director of Probation Child Welfare for the L.A. County Probation Department. “We show [caregivers] pictures of them playing with dogs, and we let them know that they’re just like every foster kid. They’ve just made a mistake and most of the mistakes they’ve made aren’t crazy things. They just need to be forgiven and they need someone to love them in spite of what they did."
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