In July, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services confirmed that some children and state custody had been sleeping in its office buildings.
Well, today, Secretary Eric Friedlander gave legislators an update on finding homes or facilities for children from difficult situations.
We were we were primarily looking to our hospitals, but it was open to anybody that wanted to come in and offer these services to really specific sets of youth who have are difficult to place either developmental intellectual disabilities, children with on the autism spectrum disorder, those who are sexually active, those who are aggressive with staff.
Any time a child was in, it would be in a facility and actually injured a staff person.
That is like the Scarlet letter.
It is very difficult to get them placed.
So we were looking for some smaller units where we basically said, we'll work out whatever we need to pay you.
I'm disappointed to tell you that we got no responses.
Zero.
Secretary Friedlander said that the cabinet usually has around 20 children that are difficult to assign to a foster home.