Were they looking for a for a whole year?
We have children living in an office
building. I can't even sleep.
I'm like, what's the point of being
here if I have somewhere to go?
Hearing that just breaks your heart.
Those are just some of the sights and
sounds are 10 Investigates team uncovered
from our foster care system tonight.
As 10 Investigates shows us
foster children are sleeping,
sometimes living in county office
building tonight our month long
investigation has uncovered a
problem that affects the states
most vulnerable children.
Here's Chief investigative reporter
Bennett Haberly with the video
proof and its ripple effects.
In a county office building,
in the middle of the night,
police respond to a child in need.
A teenage girl in Crisis who is threatened
staff and been taken to the ground.
I don't want to be here.
This is Franklin County
Children's Services Intake Center,
where 10 Investigates found children
in Ohio's foster care system have
ended up sleeping or sometimes
living on the county cannot find a
suitable foster home or placement.
There have nowhere to go.
Who brought you here?
Case worker are you staying out of foster?
I was in the hospital,
but I just got here Monday.
You've been nowhere to go.
Well, the body camera footage has
been pixelated by Whitehall police.
You can still hear conversations,
including this moment between
a Whitehall officer and a
Children's services supervisor.
This is where she's been
sleeping and everything. Yeah,
she's been here for quite a few days,
so she's kind of taken over this.
Brooke, what's going good? How are you,
Bennett? Brooke Connell is the Whitehall
officer who responded to that call last
July and managed to calm the girl down.
You were just wrestled to the ground.
You're a couple weeks pregnant.
You have a lot going on right now, OK?
You need a minute to breathe.
Passion for these calls.
After playing the team's favorite music
while transporting them to the Children's
Hospital for further evaluation,
this is just one of several calls
Cono and her fellow officers
have made within the past year.
Unfortunately, you see that
some of these kids are there
for an extended period of time.
Four months later, on Thanksgiving
weekend, the same teenage girl is
referenced in this police report,
noting she'd run away from the building
11 days later on December 7th.
Our camera captured video of
a girl matching her exact.
Description Standing outside
FCS wrapped in a blanket.
Again, it goes back to placement.
You know, sometimes we they
don't have the placement,
or the foster homes don't have extra space,
or there's not enough foster
parents to go around and.
They they do what they can, but it's it's
a sad turn of events for these kids.
Wait for this crazy I don't want to be here.
They can't find nowhere else I need to go.
This 16 year old ran away from
the FCS office telling police this
summer she's been in the foster
care system since she was nine
months old. Well, it's OK.
It's hard. It hurts my back.
Threatening staffing.
Saying he's going to tear up the place,
and they've been here for three days.
Yesterday he ran, came back
on another run. A sheriff's deputy
expresses concern to Franklin
County Children's services over
repeatedly calling police to deal
with children at the county office.
Because we can't keep calling
them to come out here for this.
But he's he's threatening staff
and he's he's saying he's going
to tear up the place. So at this
point somebody need to be up here with him.
Nobody, yeah, but I can't keep doing
it. The repeated calls have
led to increased frustrations.
It is a county wide problem between
children services and the juvenile
correction system where they do
not want to do their jobs and keep
kids where they need to be kept.
We can deal with them, no.
There are sworn deputies working
inside here who let these children,
they don't walk out and then call us to
come catch them and bring them back.
And guess what?
We catch them and bring them back.
Over the past 16 months,
115 children spent the night in the offices
of Franklin County Children Services.
The county says that number may include
kids who were counted more than once,
especially if they left for a
placement but were then sent back.
The state could only provide
an estimate that last year.
Roughly 400 children across
the state spent at least one
night in a county office
in Cuyahoga County workers there
complained to county officials
during a meeting last July.
We've had up here. Well, y'all act then.
Because no one is doing anything right now.
And I'm sorry, I'm frustrated. I am angry.
The problem is that these kids that come in,
they go out of the building,
they come in as they want.
So they go here,
they steal food at Daves comeback,
they go out, they prostitute,
they come back, they come back and they
take this new one that came in and take
her out to prostitute or to get raped.
That's not what we're supposed to do.
We removed kids from people's homes
because you're not protecting them.
But that's what they're doing there
and nobody is protecting them.
And the state agency that overseas them,
OD GFS, both declined multiple interview
requests from town investigates.
I don't want to be here.
We took our findings to Kim Eckert
with the Children's Defense Fund Ohio,
a nonprofit that advocates for
children and their safety.
There's a pattern and that
there's a problem with placement.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
I think that, you know,
we don't want this to be happening.
And so we don't necessarily want to invest.
Energy in addressing it because we would
rather it not be happening and but
the the solution is not to ignore it,
Eckert says. There should be
additional funding and dedicated staff
assigned to deal with foster children
who were in between placements.
It is untenable that the default
sanctioned solution that we have
all somewhat kind of agreed upon is
that just staying in offices is OK,
it's not OK, it's not OK,
and we can do something. About this.
And Bennett is joining us live now from
Franklin County Children's Services.
And Bennett, what are the
calls for change this evening?
Yolanda, as you heard the advocates
right now, they want a couple of things.
They want the state to require the
counties to keep a more accurate
count of how often this happens,
how often children end up spending
the night in the offices.
We've also taken our findings
to a state lawmaker.
Here's her reaction to some of what we found.
Obviously that's a devastating number.
No child should have to spend the
night in an office building and I
think really what this highlights is
that statewide we are experiencing a
huge shortage of foster caregivers.
And that was Representative Susan Manchester.
What she said is the same thing with the
state, the same thing that FCS told us,
which is that there is a need for additional
foster parents in the state of Ohio.
But the advocates that
says that's not enough,
that this issue needs attention right now
and that could involve additional funding.
They're calling it a crisis.
Reporting live in Whitehall tonight,
Bennett Haberly, 10, Investigates.