Amid CPS scandal, is the new Clovis office for Fresno County foster kids a good solution?
A former big-box store being transformed into a Fresno County facility in Clovis is more than a month away from being ready to take in children under the care of the county, the top administrator said Monday.
The new facility came under new scrutiny last week after The Fresno Bee reported the deplorable conditions inside a downtown office — the CWS Office on L Street in Fresno — where some foster children would stay while waiting to be placed by Fresno County’s Child Protective Services.
Social workers said inside that office space children slept on yoga mats, could not shower and were fed fast food. Children often slept in rooms with lights that don’t turn off.
The new facility, which the county calls its Clovis Campus, already holds several social services departments on the properties on Peach Avenue between Ashlan and Dakota avenues.
The former Costco building is expected to be ready around Thanksgiving, according to Jean Rousseau, the county’s chief administrative officer.
Rousseau has said he was not made aware of the conditions at the Child Protective Services hub, noting a Department of Social Services report from August said children were sleeping in the L Street office, which is about a 10-minute walk from his office.
“It never intimated the actual conditions that I found last week. It did talk about having to keep children at the office, in some cases, more than a night,” he said. “That didn’t raise, necessarily, red flags for me. If I did it again — hindsight 20/20 — I would have walked over there.”
The 140,000-square-foot structure will be turned into office and other space, he said. A portion will be the new home of Child Protective Services.
There’s room for about 30 children and, in a pinch, there could be room for 80, Rousseau said. The new space also has a shower, kitchen and pantry, and will get a bistro-style refrigerator that can be stocked with sandwiches and other food.
Social workers last week said the downtown office could hold a few or several children at any given time in the building that was staffed 24/7. But that building on L Street was not set up with beds or a kitchen.
Rousseau said Monday the L Street building will no longer be used by the county and all its employees will move to the Clovis Campus.
Not a long-term fix?
Fresno County social worker Brinae Pointer said she has reservations about the move across town. The children overseen by the county certainly need better conditions, but the move to Clovis puts services farther away from many, according to Pointer, who is a union steward with the Service Employees International Union.
“I know it’s being depicted as an answer to the problems,” she said. “It’s in Clovis so it’s far from the community that needs the most access.”
Pointer was quick to point out there are families in need in Clovis, but the number of families in need are higher in south Fresno.
The move only brings more challenges, according to Hector Cerda, a social work practitioner who works for Fresno County. The Fresno County Superior Courthouse is in downtown Fresno.
“When a family needs to go to court or a parent needs to go to court, (it) revolves around us and (it) revolves around the court, and we should be staying in downtown,” he told The Bee last Monday.
It’s unclear how the county will address that distance, he said. “We still don’t even know how they are going to address us traveling to court back-and-forth,” he said. “They are telling us they are probably going to have a shuttle or a schedule. It makes no sense.”
Until the Clovis Campus is ready, Child Protective Services can house those foster children waiting for a more permanent home at the old University Medical Center campus, often called UMC.
On Cedar Avenue and Kings Canyon Road, the old UMC has been in and out of sales deals in recent years. County staffers say no public employees have used the building since about the beginning of the year.
Social worker Lorraine Ramirez, a 20-year employee of Fresno County, said she’s visited the site, saying the children have access to plenty of blankets, hygiene care products and clothing.
Children can shower at a hotel but they don’t get time outside. She said it’s an improvement but not a solution to L Street’s longtime problems.
“These are not new issues,” she said. “They have been brought up to management and then dismissed for years. Only because of the media attention did (it) get management’s attention.”
Social workers say Fresno County’s child welfare system is understaffed, leaving social workers overwhelmed with work and not feeling appreciated. The union says Fresno County social workers are paid the lowest in the state for the county job.
Other barriers to success
Rousseau said both the UMC and Clovis campuses are a triage system to hold children temporarily.
State Assembly Bill 403 changed where children in the welfare system could be placed by raising the standards for foster homes to be licensed. The idea was to give those children a better shot at success, but that also gave social workers fewer options.
Long-term success relies on getting more homes and facilities in the county who can take some of the most troubled children, Rousseau said.
“The choices we have to place kids are more limited than the were before,” he said. “That’s the issue we’re going to have to work on, trying to expand the number of foster care homes and options for children that we don’t have now.”
Officials have said state bureaucracy stands in the way of good solutions. The state, for example, does not allow children to be sent to a neighboring state where a facility exists, officials have argued.
This story was originally published October 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
