Kids are still sleeping in KY social services offices. What’s the Cabinet doing about it?
After a January report that showed dozens of children in state care had slept in state social services buildings last year for lack of alternative placements, Kentucky’s top social services executive told a legislative committee Tuesday, “We are not comfortable with this situation at all, but it is the situation we are presented with.”
The Department for Community Based Services has “tried lots of different things to address this issue” in the last two years, Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Eric Friedlander told a Senate committee in Frankfort. But the reality, Friedlander said, is that there are foster and adoption facilities in Kentucky that “have tremendous difficulties in accepting some of these children.”
As a result, some high-acuity children and youth under the supervision of the Department for Community Based Services are still sleeping in office buildings across Kentucky, and a long-term solution to avoid that outcome and better support that population of minors hasn’t been reached, stakeholders agreed on Tuesday.
“There is a need for something else we don’t have,” Friedlander said.
He suggested Senate Bill 111 from Senate Families and Children Committee Chairman Danny Carroll, R-Benton could be part of the solution. That bill would fill in service gaps and set protocols for how the state treats high-acuity kids in their care who’ve been charged with a public offense — a coordinated effort between DCBS and the Dept. of Juvenile Justice, under the bill — and authorize the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet to build a “high-acuity health facility” to house this population of youth.
Carroll made a similar proposal in the 2024 legislative session to build a $22 million, 16-bed mental health facility to treat youth held by the state Department of Juvenile Justice, but it never passed.
“We create these kids,” Friedlander said. “What we don’t have are those facilities with sufficient security, architectural security and the level of service, the staffing, the professionalism, the clinical expertise within that structure. That’s why your bill is so important. That’s what we’re missing.”
Kids, teens sleeping in KY office buildings
In January, a report from the Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman showed 49 kids and adolescents slept in office buildings run by the state’s social services agency last year between June 10 and Oct. 29 because more more accommodating placements weren’t available. On average, the children spent four days sleeping in a DCBS building during those five months, and six children spent 10 or more days in a state building.
Republican Auditor of Public Accounts Allison Ball, who oversees the ombudsman’s office, told the Senate committee Tuesday that she called for an investigation after 2023 media reports that children under care of the state were sometimes sleeping in DCBS offices, hotels and state park lodges.
On Tuesday, Ball told committee members she had hoped the issue would have been addressed after Friedlander said that year the Cabinet would pay “whatever it takes” to get it resolved.
The issues, however, are still ongoing. But Friedlander said it’s not because the Cabinet isn’t doing all it can to help the youth.
“There are some of these beds we probably pay close to a million dollars a year (for), and still we have facilities that will refuse to take the child,” Friedlander said Tuesday. “It’s not that we haven’t made every attempt to get these children placed and the services (they) need.”
Lisa Dennis, commissioner for the Cabinet, told lawmakers Tuesday that many of the children who end up sleeping in DCBS offices have mental health diagnoses, a history of acute trauma, and have bounced around between state-sanctioned placements, sometimes to dozens of different facilities.
A 17-year-old, for example, was being boarded in a DCBS office after all in-state and out-of-state placements denied her, Dennis said. The teen suffers from bipolar disorder, PTSD and substance use disorder. The teen first entered out-of-home care in 2020 with a significant history of sexual and physical abuse and neglect. While in a psychiatric residential treatment facility, the teenager was charged with multiple criminal offenses before being placed in juvenile detention and then, when no other facility would take her, at the DCBS office.
Establishing guidance, regulations for DCBS offices
In February of last year, there were 19 total youths across Kentucky sleeping in DCBS offices, Dennis said. Eight of those youth were sleeping in an office building for the first time, while the other 11 had been placed in an office before.
Friedlander said the Kentucky Inspector General has visited DCBS offices “to make sure they were reasonable for accommodating children.”
Caroll, the Senate Families and Children Committee Chairman, in signaling this as a new normal for DCBS, said there has been discussion on “formalizing the area that these kids are being cared for” in office buildings, “because (most) kids are only there for a few days.”
Sen. Matt Deneen, R-Hardin, said he’s “concerned” that the Cabinet has resorted to placing kids in office buildings and “has not worked diligently to establish some types of guidance or regulations internally” to determine when a child should be placed in a non-traditional placement, like a DCBS office.
“Maybe this is a time for us to examine (existing) facilities and partnerships,” Deneen added.
But Carroll pushed back against that characterization and instead blamed the media, saying, “I think the Cabinet is doing everything they can. The media plays up that they’re (staying) in an office, but it’s not that simple. I’m not as concerned about them being in an office, I’m concerned about what happens in that office — how secure is it?”
He added, “We can’t get wrapped up in the media’s blowing this out of proportion. It is a problem, there’s no question about it, and we’ve got to resolve it. But obviously, there’s a lot more to this or it would already be resolved.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
