At least 49 children slept in Kentucky social services buildings last year, report finds
At least 49 children spent a night sleeping in buildings run by Kentucky’s primary social service agency last year, according to a report released Tuesday.
The 14-page report, which looks at a “small sample” of the state’s total cases and highlights a lack of options for housing children who are under the state’s care, signals “systemic failures that need urgent action,” said Allison Ball, a Republican auditor of public accounts. Ball’s department oversees the Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman, which compiled the report.
On average, the children spent four days sleeping in a Department for Community Based Services building between June 10 and Oct. 29 last year. Six children spent 10 or more days in a state building. DCBS, an arm of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, oversees and provides services for children in the foster and adoption care system.
During that time, 49 children spent a combined 198 days in a CHFS building. The longest stint that a child was housed in a state building during that period was 35 days in Boone County. The average age of the children was 13.
The Two Rivers Service Region, which includes Daviess, Warren and Henderson counties, had 13 children sleeping in CHFS buildings — the highest number of children housed in state buildings during the studied period.
Kenton and Hardin counties housed six children each, and Jefferson County housed two children.
Kendra Steele, executive director of the Cabinet’s Office of Public Affairs, said of the report Tuesday night, “We continue to take action to address the challenges that come with placing youth with behavioral problems and severe mental or a history of violence or sexual aggression with foster families or facilities.”
Steele added, “We’re working to provide more funding to secure additional safe, short-term care options for youth, and we’ve publicly addressed this multiple times with lawmakers. Just today, we filed an emergency regulation to increase funding that will support many of these children.”
Ball said she directed the ombudsman’s office to investigate the issue after media outlets began reporting in July 2023 that children under the care of the state were sometimes sleeping in Department for Community Based Services buildings, hotels and state park lodges when other placements were not immediately available.
Since the Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman was reorganized under Ball’s office in July of last year, both have continued to “receive complaints about children sleeping in state office buildings.”
In October 2024, Ball asked Office of the Ombudsman Citizen Assistant Specialist Angela Larison to pull a “sample of the 49 most recent cases involving children spending the night in a state office building to “see if there was a need for further investigation.”
Though “most of the stays were very short,” or one to five days, “stays of one or two days accounted for 63% spent in a DCBS office,” Director for the Division of Citizen Services and Policy Integrity Bryan Morrow wrote in the report.
The report, which provides a snapshot of a vast system, “leaves many questions that still need answers,” including “why DCBS is not securing placement for these children.”
“And what of these children being housed in state office buildings?” Morrow wrote. “What kind of care are they receiving? Are the workers who are watching these children trained to watch high-acuity children? Are the children receiving any medications that have been prescribed? Are the workers trained to dispense this medication? Are the children receiving behavioral and mental-health services as needed for the best interest of the child while housed in the state office building?
“The Ombudsman’s Office should investigate and answer these types of questions.”
Based on the findings released Tuesday, Ball advised the ombudsman’s office to launch a “more thorough investigation to find innovative solutions” to the problem.
This story was originally published January 28, 2025 at 3:16 PM.
