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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2019
Oregon sends foster kids to facilities accused of abuse
State senator is
troubled by report
By LAUREN DAKE
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Last year, Washington
state child welfare offi cials
saw reports about wide-
spread use of restraints and
physical abuse at a residen-
tial treatment facility in Iowa
where they were sending
foster care children.
Washington
stopped
sending children to the for-
profi t Clarinda Academy.
But some of Oregon’s
most vulnerable children are
still there.
An October report by the
nonprofi t Disability Rights
Washington concluded that
Washington’s use of out-of-
state facilities to house fos-
ter children was “creating
an unacceptably heightened
risk of abuse and neglect”
and causing more “harm to
youth who have already suf-
fered from multiple, pro-
longed, or chronic traumatic
events.”
In Oregon, the number of
children being sent to out-of-
state, privately run psychiat-
ric units has more than dou-
bled since 2017. There are
more than 80 children placed
in out-of-state facilities. The
majority are in facilities run
by Alabama-based Sequel
Youth and Family Ser-
vices, which oversees Clar-
inda Academy in Iowa and
a number of other for-profi t
facilities across the country.
There are 11 Oregon fos-
ter children in Iowa facilities
run by Sequel and another 39
foster kids in Sequel facilities
in Utah. Across the country,
about 74 Oregon children are
in Sequel centers.
These children have
not been sent out-of-state
because they have com-
mitted crimes, but rather
because Oregon does not
have enough beds to house
them. Yet, they are being
treated as if they are inmates,
according to the Disability
Rights Washington report.
Bradley W. Parks/Oregon Public Broadcasting
State Sen. Sara Gelser speaks on the fl oor of the Senate in January.
Before the watchdog
group launched a systemic
investigation into the Iowa
facility, its researchers spent
two days conducting pri-
vate interviews with about
a dozen young people in the
facility.
“Practically every young
person who spoke … dis-
cussed or alluded to expe-
riencing multiple traumatic
events of sexual or physi-
cal assault and/or abandon-
ment by trusted adults in
their lives, and almost all
had been through multiple
placements prior to coming
to Iowa,” the report reads.
Oregon c hild w elfare offi -
cials said they were aware of
documented problems —
including liberal and ques-
tionable use of physical
restraints — at some facili-
ties they are using to house
children.
After the allegations of
abuse in Iowa surfaced, a
spokesman from the Ore-
gon Department of Human
Services said in an email, a
representative of Clarinda
Academy and Sequel visited
Oregon to respond.
Oregon staff also fl ew to
Iowa to check on the chil-
dren at Clarinda, according
to a Department of Human
Services spokesman. In
addition, the state says, Ore-
gon contracts with third-
party professionals to moni-
tor children at all out-of-state
facilities. Based on those vis-
its, Oregon offi cials deter-
mined foster children being
sent elsewhere are safe.
State Sen. Sara Gelser,
D-Corvallis, had a dif-
ferent reaction when she
was recently alerted to the
situation:
“I can’t see how you have
these unsafe things happen-
ing in these facilities and you
think the Oregon kids are
OK,” said Gelser, who chairs
the Senate Human Services
Committee. “Kids out of
state are so vulnerable. They
are so far away from home
… They are isolated from
their families. They have
already been identifi ed as
diffi cult kids so people don’t
believe them and then they
are isolated.”
Gelser, who is also a
member of a task force
working to help Oregon fos-
ter children with specialized
needs, was upset.
“I had no idea we were
contracting with an enor-
mous for-profi t organization
that seems to specialize in
taking kids from states with
foster care capacity prob-
lems and certainly had no
idea we had kids in places
where there are very seri-
ous allegations of abuse and
neglect,” Gelser said.
Oregon was recently sued
by lawyers representing fos-
ter children for placing some
children removed from their
homes in hotels. The state
has largely stopped doing
that, but almost simultane-
ously, has quietly increased
the number of foster children
sent out of state.
Department of Human
Services and c hild w elfare
offi cials are required to make
regular reports to Gelser’s
legislative committee. Yet
Gelser was unaware of the
magnitude of the problem.
“I’m stunned we didn’t
know about this enormous
number of kids out of state,”
she said. “I’m dumbfounded
there is this huge general
fund expenditure … I don’t
understand, this is a major
expenditure that we’ve never
discussed at the Legisla-
ture,” she said.
From October to Decem-
ber , the state spent about
$2.5 million to send children
out of state.
Disturbing reports
from Iowa
Susan Kas, an attorney
with Disability Rights Wash-
ington and one of the inves-
tigators who looked into
Sequel’s Clarinda Academy,
said they chose to examine
Clarinda simply because it
had the most Washington
children.
In other words, the advo-
cacy group chose Clarinda
Academy for investiga-
tion essentially at random,
not because they suspected
anything was amiss. If one
agency chosen arbitrarily
has problems, Kas said,
shouldn’t the state take a
closer look at all the out-of-
state facilities it uses?
Kas argued their fi ndings
warrant a much deeper look
at what she called the states’
“dirty little secret” of send-
ing foster children out of
state.
She called what Disabil-
ity Rights Washington dis-
covered “disturbing.”
There appeared to be very
little oversight of the pro-
gram for sending foster chil-
dren elsewhere, she said.
In Washington state,
some children fl ew to Iowa
alone, and strangers picked
them up to drive them to the
facility. Like Oregon, Wash-
ington state primarily con-
tracts with third-party social
workers to oversee children
sent out of state.
“We have no reason to
believe kids have any better
protection from this kind of
thing … Not just at Sequel,
but any other company that is
charging $8,000 to $10,000
a month,” Kas said. “If there
is no oversight, there is a
high risk (abuse) could be
happening.”
The alleged abuse came to
light in Washington because
Kas and her team have the
ability under federal law to
access certain records, which
helped with their investi-
gation into Washington’s
placements.
Oregon’s c hild w el-
fare offi cials required Ore-
gon Public Broadcasting to
fi le a formal public records
request to even learn the
name of the out-of-state
facilities where the state
sends children. It took sev-
eral more days, phone calls
and emails before the c hild
w elfare offi ce disclosed how
many children are placed at
each facility.
Oregon offi cials have not
yet responded with details
about how often casework-
ers travel with children when
they are sent out of state, how
frequently caseworkers from
Oregon see children face to
face once they are in another
state, or if any of the foster
care children from Oregon
have complained about their
treatment.
When OPB asked c hild
w elfare offi cials for specifi c
details of their oversight of
the out-of-state facilities, a
spokesman responded by
email: “The d epartment goes
through an extensive check
for any facility, including
reviewing information at a
state’s licensing body, mak-
ing sure the facility is in good
standing, verifying s ecretary
of s tate business records, and
conducting other research.”
Questions about
Clarinda Academy
Clarinda Academy is the
fl agship campus of Sequel,
a for-profi t corporation that
has acquired or opened 32
other facilities, including
locked and psychiatric resi-
dential facilities, across the
country, according to Dis-
ability Rights Washington’s
investigation.
The facility was estab-
lished in 1992 and houses
children from all over the
country, usually more than
200 people between the ages
of 12 and 18, according to
the report.
According to the report,
Clarinda Academy is essen-
tially run like a correctional
institution. The facility is
actually co-located on the
grounds of a state prison.
Children aren’t allowed
to leave the institution at
will, and they are isolated;
it’s diffi cult to make phone
calls, they aren’t allowed
to interact with members of
the opposite sex, and they
attend class at the facility
rather than going to outside
schools.
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