I-Team: ‘It’s a crisis;’ Dayton’s foster group home dilemma: impact and solutions

DAYTON — The Dayton area has more foster group homes than anywhere else in Ohio. And the impact on the Miami Valley is a growing crisis.

The News Center 7 I-Team’s lead investigative reporter, John Bedell, looked into how this is impacting kids in the state’s care and our community. Plus, he investigated the possible solutions being talked about here in the Miami Valley and at the statehouse in Columbus.

The I-Team has gotten new numbers dealing with the state foster care system. In Dayton, the data paints a picture that’s oversaturated.

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According to data obtained by the I-Team from the City of Dayton, of the 220 foster group homes for kids across Ohio, 78 of them (or 35%) are in Montgomery County.

These are homes for children who, for whatever reason, have been removed from their own homes and are currently in the state’s care.

Local officials tell the I-Team, in many cases, the children living in these group homes in the Dayton area aren’t from Montgomery County because there’s a lack of facilities statewide.

At one of the foster group homes in Dayton the I-Team stopped at for this investigation, this one near the I-75 and U.S. 35 interchange on the city’s west side, a man who identified himself as the manager told us all five boys currently at the home are from “out of town,” including one from Cuyahoga County, which encompasses Cleveland.

“We need more family foster homes,” State Rep. Andrea White, a Republican from Kettering told the I-Team. “But what’s happening is: because we don’t have enough family foster homes, we have now this level of group homes for youth. And we’re finding a lot of students are coming from other counties because their counties don’t have any homes near them. And so the problem is you’re having a child in Montgomery (County) who’s five or 6 or 10 counties away from their family.”

During our investigation, there was one question the I-Team kept asking: why are more than one-third of the foster group homes in the state in Montgomery County? Several officials told the I-Team that reasons remain elusive.

“We don’t know why,” Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck told the I-Team. “I don’t know if anybody’s really determined that, but that’s one of the reasons that several of us got together: The Dayton Police Department, the Sheriff’s Office, and a whole lot of other community members got together and said, ‘why are they here? Why are we having so many problems, with juveniles from other counties when we obviously have our own problems with juveniles in this county, that we need to focus on?’ But so many resources are being given to these group homes.”

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The data from the City of Dayton the I-Team reviewed showed most of the foster group homes within Montgomery County are inside the city limits.

“The system is already overwhelmed,” Darius Beckham, Senior Policy Aide to Dayton Mayor Jeffrey Mims, Jr., told the I-Team. “And yet new group homes are coming online, right? So, I would say it’s a crisis.”

The I-Team’s lead investigative reporter, John Bedell, asked Beckham why there is such a high concentration of the state’s group homes for foster kids in the City of Dayton.

“I think our read of the situation, quite honestly, has been twofold,” Beckham said. “Number one, our zoning is very loose on group homes. So we do not have anything in our code right now that I would say effectively regulates the ability for people to start a group home in Dayton ….But the other thing is, we have very affordable property in this city. So if you are interested in starting a group home, Dayton is a decent place to do it considering the fact that property values are not terribly difficult to work with here.”

Beckham went on to tell the I-Team, “We are taking a good look at some potential zoning changes that we can make to really reduce the concentration in our neighborhoods. We’re also trying to build in a community engagement agreement, or a good neighbor agreement, to really force and incentivize and facilitate better community in the areas in which these group homes are located. So there’s a number of potential items that we are very interested in in regards to zoning that we do plan to move forward with.”

He said the mayor’s office has been involved in discussions about how to deal with this issue for “about two years” with several groups in our community including the city, the Dayton Police Department, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Montgomery County Juvenile Court, Montgomery County Children Services, Dayton Children’s Hospital, Dayton Public Schools, and some state lawmakers.

Beckham said they also had a recent meeting with group home management and ownership to discuss issues and possible solutions and that they’re going “to reconvene them in maybe, a couple of months, hopefully in the fall, and really just keep working on this issue.”

Again, the I-Team stopped by three foster group homes in Dayton for this investigation. At one of them, no one answered. At the other two, we left contact information with people who identified themselves as either employees or management at the home. We asked them to pass our information along to ownership because we were interested in an interview for this report. So far, the I-Team has not heard back from either owner.

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Beckham also told the I-Team the city knows foster group homes are important for kids, but added, “It’s about knowing what we can handle …. It’s going to be important for us to look at what’s appropriate for Dayton as we try to deal with this issue …. It’s really stressing the system. And it’s mostly a matter of just the ridiculous number that is concentrated in the city of Dayton.”

Beckham went on to say, “We absolutely, by any means, do not want this to become a rebuke on group homes or a slap on the wrist for every single group home in the City of Dayton. Some are doing great work. Some are really trying to position these children to live good lives. The challenge is we have too many, I would say, that are struggling. And those operational challenges are really giving the entire issue a very bad reputation.”

There are public safety concerns here too. “It’s creating a lot of stress on the police department,” Beckham said.

The city says the Dayton Police Department has responded to approximately 1,000 calls for service to juvenile group homes through the first five months of this year.

Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck described to the I-Team a similar strain on resources in the last year (from June 25, 2023 through June 25, 2024.)

“In (those) 365 days – I have 12 group homes in the jurisdictions that we provide police services for – we were dispatched 957 times,” Streck said.

For perspective, that’s an average of more than two calls a day in that timeframe.

“And that can range from anything from assaults, felonious assaults, thefts, runaways, missings, things like that,” Streck said. “And that doesn’t even include the houses surrounding them that are having burglaries and breaking and entering. We’ve had churches, numerous churches broken into with things stolen out of them. Just a whole lot of issues that come along with these group homes.”

Montgomery County Children Services tells the I-Team they contract with fewer than half of the foster group homes in the county.

“I would say we may not be impacted in the same manner (as other agencies),” Geraldine Pegues, Assistant County Administrator for Human Services for Montgomery County told the I-Team.

Pegues said there’s a need for more foster family homes in the Miami Valley.

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“We do need placements and I go back to encouraging people to be foster parents within the community,” Pegues said. “Because we do have kids that need placement, and we want to place them with families or relatives. Relative caregivers, friends of the family also we’ll look at when it comes to placements.”

Miami Valley State Representatives Andrea White, (R – Kettering), and Phil Plummer, (R – Butler Township), have introduced a new bill dealing with foster group homes in Ohio. They’ve been at the table during the talks Beckham told the I-Team about earlier.

The legislative plan would increase accountability and communication requirements for group homes for children.

“Right now, there is a requirement of one time a month for a children service agency to have eyes on a child,” State Rep. White told the I-Team. “If that child is from Cleveland and they’re in Montgomery County that’s a big ordeal.”

The bill would also work to put more foster group homes in other parts of the state and place the children in those homes closer to their hometowns and families.

“We’re going to try to give more zoning opportunities so we can decrease as many as we’re getting in our county,” State Rep. Plummer told the I-Team.

The bill (House Bill 583) would also raise the minimum training requirements for staff and providers of group homes and provide targeted intervention training and supports.

“(That) is very important,” Pegues told the I-Team. “Because we know when kids are involved in this type of situation it’s traumatic for them. You know, even if they’re in (foster) care for a day or two, it is traumatic. And so, we want to have people who are trained in trauma-informed care to be able to support our young people in our community.”

Among other changes, Plummer and White’s bill would also, according to White’s office, require the “(Ohio) Department of Children and Youth (DCY) or Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (ODMHAS) to be notified by a hospital when a foster child has an emergency department visit or inpatient admission for an injury or mental health need. Additionally, these visits or admissions will require a mandatory review of the child’s placement, including its appropriateness and level of care, by the custodial children’s services agency.”

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In a statement provided to the I-Team, Dr. Kelly Blankenship, Associate Chief Medical Officer for Behavioral Health at Dayton Children’s Hospital, said:

“Group home facilities will accept high acuity youth from counties across Ohio and are often not equipped to manage the behavioral health youth’s needs. The ability of youth to access intensive community behavioral health care is a challenge for many of the group homes due to the need for information from the guardians and transportation issues.

There are multiple youth, at any given time, that have repeat behavioral crisis center visits and/or admissions to the behavioral health unit which would benefit from coordination of care with the guardian and the group home. Dayton Children’s often requests care conferences to ensure all agencies involved with the youth are aware of the community plan and to collaborate to support success.

Under the current structure, at times we find it difficult to engage the guardian to collaborate on care and treatment recommendations. When youth from group homes are discharged from the crisis center or emergency department, phone calls are made to group homes regarding discharge of patient and pick up. These calls can go unanswered. At times, group home staff do not arrive at Dayton Children’s to pick up the youth until the next day. We are in favor of the proposed bill and the changes it will bring.”

And Judge Helen Wallace, Montgomery County Juvenile Court, told the I-Team in a statement:

“Group residential facilities serve an essential function for youth. However, the issue in Montgomery County is oversaturation of group homes, as compared to other counties in the state. So far this year, more than 25 percent of youth arrested and brought to the Court’s Intervention Center have come from out-of-county youth living at local foster facilities. Often these youth are distressed due to the delay in connecting with their caregivers who reside far from Montgomery County. This isn’t ideal for the youth in detention, and it places a significant strain on local resources and staff time. Montgomery County Juvenile Court appreciates that our local legislators are calling attention to this issue.”

State Reps. Plummer and White told the I-Team their goal is to get House Bill 583 to Governor Mike DeWine for his signature by the end of the year.

State lawmakers are currently on summer break. When they return to legislative sessions in the fall, any bills that don’t make it to the governor’s desk by the end of the year will have to start from scratch in the new legislative term which begins in January.

News Center 7 will track the progress of House Bill 583 at the Statehouse in Columbus and let you know what happens.

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