State Auditor Investigating Foster Children Housing

Kentucky’s Auditor Allison Ball’s office started its investigation into foster kids who temporarily live in government buildings because there are not enough homes or residential treatment facility beds available.

Ball filed a lawsuit in August against Governor Andy Beshear and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services in an effort to gain access to a state database that houses case information on elder and child abuse.

“My office has continued to receive numerous complaints of foster children and teenagers sleeping on cots and air mattresses in office buildings, often not supervised by trained staff,” Ball said in a news release Tuesday. “I have instructed the Ombudsman’s Office to investigate this issue to uncover the problems associated with this ongoing crisis. The vulnerable children of Kentucky deserve to be placed in nurturing environments where they are provided with the resources, stability, and care they need.”

In April 2023, Judge Gina Kay 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.

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 February 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.
Source: WDRB