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Sonoma County PACEs Connection (CA)

Sonoma County’s group homes for kids adapting to state changes [PressDemocrat.com]

 

The Valley of the Moon Children’s Home, an emergency shelter for children removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect, is poised for a major transition that would dramatically reduce the number of days youths could be housed there.

The change will limit stays to 10 days and require the shelter to respond more quickly and appropriately to a child’s trauma, with an emphasis on promoting physical, psychological and emotional safety. Each one of the shelter’s 93-member staff, from cooks to counseling staff to supervisors, has been undergoing extensive training since November and will continue through June, said Leslie Winters, the children’s center section manager.

“Our goal is to create a safe haven-like environment,” Winters said. “We want to make sure that everything we’re doing is to create safety and really to assess the youth to be able to stabilize them, create calmness for them.”



After that, she said, the goal would be to find permanent family placement as soon as possible.

The changes at Valley of the Moon are in response to California’s current overhaul of the foster care system launched Jan. 1. The overhaul, known as the Continuum of Care Reform, or CCR, is aimed at dramatically scaling back group home placements while increasing the use of home-based family care.



[For more of this story, written by Martin Espinoza, go to http://www.pressdemocrat.com/n...homes-for?artslide=2

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