Children in Fresno County California custody run away and go missing
An exterior of the Fresno County Social Services Department, shown on Monday, April 6, 2020 in Fresno.
The Fresno County Child Welfare System, put in the spotlight this week for housing children in an office in downtown Fresno, has another problem: Many of its services go missing or run away.
Currently, there are nearly 60 dependents in the county on runaway status.
Some of them left the office of CWS, the county’s main hub for child protection services, according to data and interviews.
The staff cannot stop the young people from leaving the office, but sometimes the social workers follow them into the cars and try to convince them to get in the vehicle. Others are found by Fresno police hours or days later.
A miner in Fresno County custody stole a county car and destroyed it.
No one in the community was injured when the youth crashed the county car, said Lorraine Ramirez, a senior social worker with the Fresno County Department of Social Services Child Protection Agency.
Although staff are not sure whether the youth was running away or just wanted to take a walk, some children run away because they miss home or people they know, others leave to use drugs or to other reasons. A few years ago, two girls were arrested outside the L Street building in downtown Fresno by their “pimps,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez, a member of the SEIU 521 union, said social workers “cannot force a child or get hold of a child to prevent him from running.”
“They can go out the door,” she told The Bee on Friday. “We can’t stop them from leaving the building, and that’s another problem we have – is that these kids can come and go as they please because we can’t stop them.”
Until Thursday, a story from Fresno Bee revealed, the children remained at the downtown CFS office awaiting permanent placement after being taken out of parental care or after “blowing up” their placements.
This year, the Fresno Police Department responded to 134 calls for service to the CFS office; all but three involved runaways or missing minors.
Felipe Uribe, deputy information officer with the Fresno Police Department, said the address listed on the service call may be either where the minor fled or the best address to contact the flagman .
“The length of time these children are ‘missing’ can vary from a few hours to several days,” he said in an email on missing minors in general.
The Fresno County Department of Social Services is working with the court and law enforcement to diligently search for missing dependents to ensure their safety and well-being, according to the Fresno County spokesperson , Sonja Dosti.
As of Friday, Dosti said, there were 58 child protection dependents under the jurisdiction of the Fresno County Juvenile Court who were on the run.
Runaways represent 2% of the 2,700 children in county custody. Running away is the reason for an average of 6% of placement changes that occur, Dosti said.
Young people often run away for short periods before returning to their current placement or seeking help from their social worker.
“When a young person runs away, law enforcement is notified and given as much information as possible to help them, including whether the young person may be in danger or a victim of commercial sexual exploitation,” Dosti wrote. in an email.
A social worker is co-located with the Fresno Police Department’s Child Abuse and Missing Unit which assists in these cases, she said.
In the city of Fresno, this year alone there have been more than 900 calls for service involving fleeing minors, Uribe said. “This includes private homes and foster homes,” he said.
Fresno Police, however, do not track these calls based on whether the child is in foster care, so there is no specific breakdown of the number of the more than 900 calls involving foster children.
“Most of them are teenagers who aren’t allowed to leave their homes for any reason, but they go out without permission anyway,” Uribe said. “By law, foster homes are required to file a missing person report every time the child leaves without permission, even if they know where the child may go. ”
Ramirez, the social worker, said staff typically wait around 30 minutes before notifying police when a child is missing from the CWS office.
“Maybe they just needed to calm down or maybe they were just tired of being in the building,” she said. “We will try to search the surrounding area, then if we cannot find them, we will contact law enforcement.”
Safety of runaways is a challenge
Safety is a “huge” challenge when children in Fresno County custody run away, Ramirez said.
“They can be out there doing drugs, they can be out there prostituting themselves, they can just hang out and then decide, ‘OK, I’m coming back,’ she said. ‘We’ve got it all. managed. ”
Ramirez recalled the cases a few years ago where two girls staying temporarily at the CWS office were picked up by their pimps on L Street.
“They leave and say, ‘OK, I’m leaving, coming back,’ go do their business, then come back to the office, ‘she said. “And there is nothing we can do about it.”
Around the same time, she said, the girls in the CWS office were recruiting other girls to run away together.
“We haven’t had this recently, but for a while it was a problem,” Ramirez said.
The miners still flee for other reasons. Ramirez described the situation as “constant with children coming in and out of this building.”
Some come back under the influence or with objects, such as razors, and attempt to injure themselves, she said.
“There are a lot of safety issues when these kids go, not just for the kids, the runners who go, but the kids we have in the building when those runners come back, and for the safety of the staff,” she declared.
Social workers find themselves in a “very stressful situation” at work, Ramirez said. Social workers have a job they can’t mentally quit at 5 p.m., she said.
“It’s very heartbreaking to have to bring this work home,” she said. “You worry about the children. You worry about the children you picked up.
Kids living in the office for a while, what’s next?
Ramirez said three children who were in the CWS office on Thursday were placed in a motel and taken to Denny’s for dinner after senior Fresno County administrator Jean Rousseau intervened to talk about the living conditions in the office. children.
Dosti, with the county, said a county facility at the old university medical center near the fairgrounds will be ready on Saturday with “bedding, staff, food service and a pantry on site.” in case the placements could not be found for the youngsters.
“We are continuing to prepare the new CWS site in Clovis which will have several rooms, a kitchen, fresh produce, a shower and a laundromat,” she said. “That said, the county believes the UMC and Clovis options are short-term solutions for youth waiting for placement beyond a few hours.”
County officials are expected to meet with state officials early next week to explore longer-term solutions to “easily place young people in more ideal and comfortable environments,” she said. .
This story was originally published October 16, 2021 5:00 a.m.