The case of a 12-year-old girl who was shot 19 days after fleeing from her state home for the eighth time sheds light on one of the most frustrating rules facing caregivers: They aren’t allowed to stop youths from running.
When wards of the state want to leave, all they have to do is walk out the door. This year, 2,153 state wards have done that 6,094 times, according to Illinois Department of Children and Family Services officials.
In most cases, state rules say caregivers can do no more than try to persuade them to stay, no matter how old they are.
The shooting has renewed discussion of how to stop youths from leaving, either by changing the policy or by creating locked residential facilities, which have been legal since 1998 but have never been licensed.
State child welfare officials have begun looking for facilities to be part of a pilot program to lock up more youths who could harm themselves or others.
That is also the only criteria DCFS sets for using manual restraints to prevent running. In nearly all other cases, the youth must be allowed to leave.
“That is consistent with the law you will find in virtually every state in the land. States are struggling,” said Mark Courtney, director of Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. “Child welfare agencies are not jails. Child welfare agencies have limited legal authority to physically restrain children and deprive them of their freedom of movement.”
That hasn’t always been the case. In much of the 20th Century, the state often incarcerated runaways, experts say.
State and federal governments passed laws in the 1970s that prohibited government from locking up youths who did not commit crimes. Then Illinois began sending the most troubled wards to other states, where they lived in locked residential facilities. In the 1990s those youths were brought back to Illinois, where there was no locked facility to take them.
At Columbus-Maryville Children’s Reception Center, the North Side facility from which the 12-year-old girl ran away in July, a rules sheet youths sign states: “We do discourage running from our facility, however, if you do run, we cannot be responsible for your belongings. Therefore, when you leave our facility without permission, please pack your belongings and take them with you.”
Caregivers say youths run because they are lonely or frustrated or bored. Some run to their neighborhoods or former foster homes. Some run back to people who have abused them.
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Some facilities adjust the state rule to their population.
Maryville program director James Guidi is reviewing Columbus Maryville’s practice of restraining children 12 and younger who try to run away but letting those older than 13 walk out. The 12-year-old simply got away from a supervisor, but he questions whether that facility’s policy turns caregivers into police officers.
“We shouldn’t stop them because that would be like incarcerating them,” he said. “I would prefer not to lock the child up, but is society willing to foot the bill on the alternatives?
“When there’s clear and convincing evidence that a child is putting themselves at risk, even though it’s not immediate risk, we have to have a mechanism for putting them at least temporarily in a locked facility until we can develop a rapport with them and engage them in a therapeutic and educational process.”
Two state-appointed monitors said runaways are one of the problems at Maryville’s Des Plaines center that need to be fixed before its state contract is approved.
DCFS Director Bryan Samuels said he intends in coming months to identify places that are both interested in being licensed and locked facilities and have the skills and experience to do so. Samuels said youths sent to such facilities must be a danger to themselves or others.
“There are some who would say that chronic runners is a population that should be targeted for secured care. I disagree with that completely,” Samuels said. “If the only thing those kids are doing wrong is running they should not be locked away. …
“Just to be able to control a kid to treat him seems to be an insufficient reason to lock a kid away.”
Samuels said he is also considering placing chronic runners in a foster home selected to retain them, “not just put the kid back in the place where he or she ran from,” he said.
Ben Wolf, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said running away is a symptom of systemic problems.
“A lot of times kids run away to places they feel someone loves them,” Wolf said. “They should throw out the current case plan and have a new plan much shorter with two questions: Whom does this child love? What does the child most enjoy doing? We ought to build everything else we do for the child around those two questions.”
Mary Hollie, executive officer of Lawrence Hall Youth Services, with residential care for 80 youths, said she and her staff try to persuade youths to stay by reminding them of all the activities–art, canoeing, photography–available at the facility.
“You’re afraid for them,” Hollie said. “You are afraid of the perils of society and what might happen to that child. You worry. We want them with us. We want them to come home again.”
But she added that despite trying, she doesn’t have a solution: “I sure as heck don’t have a magic pill.”
Maryville shelter workers say girls run away more than boys because many girls are running to boys. Girls run because they are jealous of each other, because they just don’t trust the system to find them a home.
Violence has marked the life of the 12-year-old girl who was shot Sunday and is recovering after surgery, state records show.
Her family turned her over to the state when she threatened an adult relative with a knife after being slapped in the face. Her family refused to go with her to therapy.
At the shelter, she unleashed her aggression. She ran away after allegedly threatening staffers with a stick. Another time, she hit a resident, the records state.
Since coming into custody in February, she ran away while at school and from shelter activities. She didn’t return from visiting friends and relatives.
A Maryville document describes the 12-year-old as “functioning as an adult in her mind.” The worker recommended that the girl be placed in a group home.
“It seems as though her defiant attitude has done well to safeguard her from her underlying feelings, possibly those of depression and anger,” a Maryville worker wrote. “[She] has spent a great deal of energy building up her defenses. These will not likely break down without tremendous effort, consistency and patience from the adults in her life.”
At the last shelter the girl ran from, burgundy walls and rooms with wood beds and bureaus make up the girls’ sleeping quarters. Some beds are covered with flowery comforters, and a picture of birds flying over a field hangs on a wall. A cabinet is marked with cuss words.
On a recent night, a worker was doing the only thing she was permitted to do to stop a girl, pregnant and diabetic, from running away. The worker was talking to her.
“Can I speak to you in your room?” the worker asked.
“We’ve got nothing to talk about,” the girl said.
“What’s the problem?” the worker said.
“Nothing. I’m fine. I don’t want to be here,” the girl answered.
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“Where do you want to be?” the worker asked.
“At home,” the girl said.
“You have to baby your baby. You have to keep your baby in a safe situation. We don’t want you to leave. We want you to be here,” the worker said. “I don’t know when your placement is going to come, but you need to make your decision. I’m going to leave it up to you to make your decision.”
Down the hall, a baby cried above the sound of a blow drier.
The girl stayed.