![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SAC_FosterCare_HA_004_04262024.JPG\" "\\"A")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
A bicycle helmet lies in a sandbox on Friday, April 26, 2024, at Progress Ranch, a Davis short-term residential therapeutic facility for boys ages 6-13 who need full-time care.<\/p>\n
Hector Amezcua<\/p>\n
hamezcua@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
No one knows what to do with teens in California\u2019s foster care. As a result, our most vulnerable children are being moved further away from their communities \u2014 and many are simply running away.<\/a><\/p>\n Specialized group care homes are increasingly closing thanks to a decade-old law that requires the state to place children into family care over group care facilities. Simultaneously, an insurance crisis has made it nearly impossible to insure these group residential programs.<\/p>\n Now, new research<\/a> \u2014 and a scathing Sacramento County Grand Jury report<\/a> \u2014 have shed light on exactly how teenage foster children are being lost in the widening cracks of the crumbling foster care system, where they are subject to a greater risk of sexual exploitation, substance abuse and homelessness.<\/p>\n And Sacramento County, which just restored $8 million in budget funding<\/a> to the Sheriff\u2019s Office and even more to the District Attorney\u2019s Office, has carved millions out of every other department to cover a $101 million budget deficit \u2014 including the Department of Child, Family and Adult Services<\/a> which oversees the county\u2019s foster care system.<\/p>\n We cannot thrive as a community when so much public money goes toward law enforcement and so little goes toward caring for those who need it most. Steady, reliable funding from the county provides the additional social workers, placement coordinators, foster family recruitment, behavioral health services and contracts with providers that these children need to succeed.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that California\u2019s well-intentioned shift toward family placement has outpaced its ability to care for the teenagers who cannot safely live in family homes, and Sacramento County is making budget choices that worsen that problem.<\/p>\n State pushes families over group care<\/p>\n The research all points<\/a> to one, overwhelming fact: When a child enters the foster care system, they\u2019re best placed to succeed in life with a foster family. That was the idea behind 2015\u2019s Assembly Bill 403,<\/a> which fundamentally altered the state\u2019s approach to foster care, shifting the child welfare system to prioritize family-based placements. It also restricted group homes to short-term therapeutic interventions.<\/p>\n But not every child is a perfect case study; some have specific mental health or behavioral struggles. Some are pregnant or already parents. Some are returning from juvenile detention or were sexually trafficked. In these cases and more, specific therapeutic needs cannot be addressed by untrained foster families, leading to constant shuffling between homes and an unsteady life for vulnerable children.<\/p>\n And, if no foster families are available, these children still need a place to lay their heads for short-term stays while one can be found.<\/p>\n The answer has always been congregate care homes, called Short-Term Residential Therapeutic Programs, or STRTPs<\/a>, that provide therapy-informed care and 24-hour supervision.<\/p>\n In 2024, I visited a local STRTP called Progress Ranch near downtown Davis<\/a> that hosted foster boys ages 6-13 with severe behavioral health needs. I saw firsthand how the home was made to look as welcoming and ordinary as possible. A puppy roamed freely through the rooms, and each child was given a handmade quilt that they would be able to take with them when they graduated from the program and were placed with a foster family.<\/p>\n Despite the severity of their needs, the children were well-cared for and loved. But Progress Ranch has since closed.<\/a><\/p>\n Sacramento County makes it worse<\/p>\n Sacramento County, in particular, has struggled for years with how to find safe, permanent housing for foster children.<\/p>\n A grand jury investigation of the issue in 2023<\/a> said the county was continuing \u201cto fail \u2014 after many years \u2014 in its efforts to find safe permanent housing for foster teenagers who are housed in temporary facilities.\u201d It also said that, in Sacramento County, \u201cteenagers are virtually invisible because they are not a priority\u201d in the foster system.<\/p>\n As a result, Sacramento County instituted a program in 2024 known as the Welcome Homes,<\/a> and now operates three of them. These homes are a transitional residential facility for foster children between the ages of 6\u201317, and a far better option than the county housing children in cells in a former juvenile detention facility, which it did for six months in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n Foster children can stay for a maximum of 10 days during the search for a more permanent placement, taking one of the roles that STRTPs once provided.<\/p>\n But the Grand Jury report found that, while the county had succeeded in improving conditions at the Welcome Homes, they remain \u201can inappropriate placement for sexually exploited youth and youth who are at risk of sexual exploitation, because Temporary Shelter Care Facilities are not a therapeutic setting\u201d \u2014 the kind of placement an STRTP can provide.<\/p>\n The report also found that the required, annual report on the Welcome Homes was never filed for 2024-25, leaving investigators completely in the dark as to its progress.<\/p>\n The consequences of this lack of transparency are not abstract, they are sexual exploitation, homelessness and addiction, feeding an already dire crisis on our streets.<\/p>\n A community should be judged by who it chooses to help. So, who are we helping?<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n
![\"Profile](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SAC_0047_PK_20250716_PK_ROBINEPLEY.jpg\")