LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For several months, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has refused to sit for an interview or answer many questions about sending hundreds of foster children to spend days or even weeks living in office buildings around the state.
And the cabinet has fought a Louisville judge's ruling that unsealed documents from a particular case and testimony from state officials that show the situation is far more problematic than officials previously revealed.
But, in recent months, WDRB News won access to those documents and court testimony while also obtaining information through Kentucky's open records law that sheds light on an issue that has been widely criticized by judges, attorneys, legislators and advocates for children.
"In my opinion, children are not being properly cared for," Judge Gina Kay Calvert told lawyers during a December court hearing the judge opened for WDRB. "My orders are not being followed. That went on for months and months and months."
Last April, Calvert ordered the state to place a boy removed from his home in a treatment center or "therapeutic foster home" with no children under the age of 16, both for the safety of that child and others.
Instead, cabinet officials housed the child in the L&N Building, a 116-year-old office building at Broadway and 9th Street in Louisville with no beds, showers or food providers. He slept on a cot, was taken to a local YMCA to shower and received no treatment for more than a week.
In a ruling last October, Calvert called the cabinet's move a "poor choice ... in direct contravention of this Court's order, and potentially illegal."
And this is just one of dozens of examples of kids having to spend days or even weeks living in office buildings around the state.
It's been nearly two years since workers began removing some troubled kids from their homes to temporarily live in government buildings because there are not enough foster homes or residential treatment facility beds available.
Since then, those placements have continued.
State data obtained in public records requests show 144 children had spent at least one night at a hotel or state office space from July 2022 to July 2023.
And from then until Feb. 1 of this year, 137 more kids stayed in those places for a night or more, amounting to 281 children in less than two years.
During this year's legislative session, state Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, proposed a new psychiatric youth facility with 16 beds at an estimated cost of $22 million. Carroll also pushed for two new places to be built for young girls, in central and western Kentucky, with the possibility of a third in northern Kentucky. Each would cost an estimated $45 million.
But the budget bills approved by the House and Senate didn't include funding for those projects. Instead, a separate bill requires the Department for Juvenile Justice to submit a report to lawmakers by Dec. 1 on the initiatives that includes cost studies, among other things.
"There are a lot of children suffering," family attorney Allison White said in an interview. "There are a lot of children that need help, and they need support and they need the commonwealth to care."
Related Stories:
- Rare public view of family court case shows 'crisis' of kids housed in Louisville office building
- Kentucky foster children sleeping on cots in state buildings is a 'tragedy,' cabinet secretary tells lawmakers
Copyright 2024 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
