By VICKI URBANIK

Two residential centers operated by the Family & Youth Services Bureau of Porter County will close at the end of this month, prompted by a 25 percent cut in state funding for services for troubled kids.

The Niequist Center, open since 1973, has provided long-term residential care and treatment for kids with mental health or behavioral problems. The Hanson House, opened four years ago, is a much more short-term residential program, providing a place for youth to stay for up to 60 days while awaiting juvenile court intervention.

“It’s a tough loss from my point of view. It’s a tough loss for the county,” said FYSB Executive Director Dennis Morgan.

Porter County Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper said the juvenile courts are now in a bind, with the most immediate need posed by the closure of the Hanson House. All children at the Hanson House are referred there by the Department of Child Services or the juvenile court authorities, and all are there under court order.

Harper said the Hanson House provides shelter care, not punishment, for kids who are victims of abuse or neglect

“We’re going to be in a bind to find a place for them,” she said, adding that top priority is to keep the children in the community as much as possible.

With the closure of two residential centers that have been heavily used by Porter County child advocates, will kids in future cases be sent to other, potentially more expensive facilities, or will fewer placements result? “Both of these things might occur,” Harper said.

The two residential centers served about 35 kids in the past year, most of them at the Hanson House, at a deficit that totaled $187,000 at the end of the fiscal year in June. Then when the state ordered its local offices of the Department of Child Services to further cut their 2008 budgets 25 percent, the FYSB Board decided to terminate both programs at the end of this month.

The DCS, which has offices in all 92 Indiana counties including one in Valparaiso, investigates allegations of child abuse and neglect and handles the placement of children removed from their homes. Funding for the DCS residential programs, known as the Family & Children Fund, comes from local property taxes.

The DCS fund made the news -- as it has in previous years -- at this year’s Porter County Council budget hearings. The 2008 property tax levy for the office was already set by the state to go down, and the Porter County Council slashed the budget by another $3 million. An appeal of that county decision is still pending.

Morgan said the DCS’s residential funding was already operating only marginally, and that Porter County has been “extremely frugal,” much more so, than in other counties.

“We’ve not placed kids who have probably needed to be placed,” he said.

The DCS has accumulated a debt for the residential placements, including the FYSB. Morgan said the DCS finally got caught up with its bills to the FYSB in July, but won’t be able to pay its most recent bills until it gets the 2007 tax draws.

When the state told the local DSC offices to cut another 25 percent -- before the county council slashed the budget even more -- the “handwriting was on the wall,” Morgan said.

To the FYSB, the issue was whether the agency should keep operating the two residential programs serving relatively few kids at a deficit, when the agency’s overall clientele is about 2,500 per year.

The per diem cost for each child placed at the Niequest Center -- including the costs of 24-hour staffing, a clinical social worker, food, utilities and other expenses -- totals about $80,000 a year. Morgan said that rate is about at the state’s median.

Gov. Mitch Daniels’ proposed property tax restructuring plan calls for having the state assume all child welfare costs now paid by local property taxes. Morgan said ideally, the state would pick up the tab but still allow local judges and child advocates to make the decision as to when a child needs placement. “That would be wonderful,” he said.

The budget difficulties facing residential placements weren’t always so severe. Morgan said that when U.S. Senator Evan Bayh was governor, a push was made to keep as many child placements as possible in their home communities. Porter County was selected as one of five counties for a pilot program, and each placement was funded half by the county and half by the state.

But after Bayh’s administration, that level of state support eroded, and residential funding for abused and neglected kids has been on a “slippery slope” ever since, he said.

The closure of the Niequest Center and the Hanson House will affect about 15 full-time employees and about 15 part-timers. Morgan said, however, that efforts are underway to find those employees new jobs in other residential programs at other agencies.

Morgan said some have questioned if the FYSB -- which provides a variety of prevention and intervention services for kids and families -- should be the agency to run residential programs for kids who need to be removed from their homes. But regardless of who does, “kids are still going to need these services,” he said.

Posted 11/7/2007