A brief respite

“There can be no keener rev­e­la­tion of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

— Nel­son Mandela

“A per­son is a per­son, no mat­ter how small.”

— Dr. Seuss

A front-page story in last week’s Delaware Gazette noted the adop­tion of a con­tract for “respite” ser­vices for juve­niles. The story incor­rectly reported that the con­tract was for $110,000 rather than its actual value of just $10,000 (the Gazette kindly printed a cor­rec­tion the fol­low­ing day) and the arti­cle didn’t have the space to go into the rea­sons behind the use of respite care and the source of the fund­ing used to pro­vide it.

Juve­niles find them­selves in court for a vari­ety of cir­cum­stances. Many are before the court because they have com­mit­ted an act that would be a crim­i­nal offense if they were an adult. These juve­niles are referred to as being ‘delin­quent’ and can be con­fined in a deten­tion facil­ity or in the state’s juve­nile prison sys­tem as admin­is­tered by the Ohio Depart­ment of Youth Services.

Other juve­niles have traf­fic cita­tions. Though the penal­ties are slightly dif­fer­ent from those that adults would face, their sit­u­a­tion is not alto­gether anom­alous to that of an adult traf­fic offender. Juve­nile traf­fic offend­ers are more likely to have to appear per­son­ally in court and are more likely to have their licenses sus­pended than adults who com­mit sim­i­lar offenses. In many cases, their license sus­pen­sion is man­dated by state law. Still other juve­niles have been neglected or abused or oth­er­wise find them­selves in need of ser­vices or place­ment in fos­ter care.

Many juve­niles, how­ever, find them­selves before the court in sit­u­a­tions that are applic­a­ble only because they are juve­niles. These offenses include vio­la­tions of local cur­fews, fail­ure to the fol­low the rules of their par­ents and teach­ers or the use of tobacco prod­ucts. Many of these cases fall under the umbrella title of being “unruly” and all of them are referred to as being “sta­tus offend­ers” since they are offend­ers only because of their sta­tus as juveniles.

In some of these cases, the rela­tion­ship between the juve­nile and the juvenile’s par­ents or guardians has dete­ri­o­rated to a point where it would be unwise or unsafe for the juve­nile to imme­di­ately return to the home. Were the case a delin­quency mat­ter, the court could con­sider plac­ing the child in deten­tion, but fed­eral reg­u­la­tions pro­hibit plac­ing a child in deten­tion for a sta­tus offense. The court could con­sider treat­ing the mat­ter as if it were an abuse or neglect case and find a fos­ter care place­ment. Both deten­tion and fos­ter care are extremely costly and fos­ter homes are lim­ited in num­ber and needed for the most seri­ous cases.

Into the breach steps the respite pro­gram. Funded with­out using gen­eral fund dol­lars, but rather through a grant from ODYS, the con­tract with the Vil­lage Net­work pro­vides a safe, effec­tive, short-term out-of-home place­ment for juve­nile sta­tus offend­ers. The place­ments are through cer­ti­fied homes licensed through the Vil­lage Net­work and they allow for a short-term cool down period while other issues are addressed.

In this way, chil­dren are kept safe through the least restric­tive method, they can quickly return home; fed­eral law is not vio­lated by plac­ing them in deten­tion; fos­ter place­ments are pre­served for chil­dren who are abused, neglected or depen­dent; and all of these goals can be met while pre­serv­ing pre­cious and lim­ited finan­cial resources for extreme cases in which those resources will be des­per­ately needed. Though the respite pro­gram is approved to expend up to $10,000 in grant funds, a sig­nif­i­cantly smaller amount was spent in the first year of the program.

Through coop­er­a­tion and care­ful plan­ning, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and com­mu­nity part­ners like the Depart­ment of Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices, the Vil­lage Net­work and many oth­ers aim to serve the largest num­ber of chil­dren and fam­i­lies that time, tal­ents and resources will allow.

David Hej­manowski is a mag­is­trate and court admin­is­tra­tor of the Delaware County Juve­nile Court and a for­mer assis­tant pros­e­cut­ing attorney.

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Mar 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.