Over more than a dozen turbulent years, he lived with a half-dozen foster families and in five different group homes. Now he is among the more than children that California sends to out-of-state residential facilities, most of them in Utah, a ProPublica analysis shows. Each of these children represents a surrender of sorts: The number of kids sent away plummeted. California has shuttered most of its secure facilities for youth and done away with almost all beds for children in psychiatric hospitals.

It has moved to curtail the use of group homes, partly because, as ProPublica has reportedseveral have melted down into chaos in recent years. Most recently, the state has adopted reforms meant to keep children in need of acute care as close to home as possible, pumping money into county programs to create new centers and recruit foster families. At the same time, California is sending more and more children to facilities out of state — some as far away as Florida. Indeed, the number of children sent from probation and child welfare agencies across the state has more than tripled since There are signs that California has a limited ability to guarantee the health and welfare of the children it sends beyond its borders.

Using several different sources of state data, ProPublica calculated that county probation departments in had some children living out of state; child welfare agencies in had another 52 placed outside California; and local school districts had more thanincluding Deshaun Becton. Days later there was a riot at the facility, with two of its buildings set on fire. Only afterward did the inspectors corroborate the complaint and begin removing children. It took a year before children were removed and California decertified the home.

ProPublica sent DSS a list of questions concerning the hundreds of California children being cared for out of state, including why such placements were needed and how the state was ensuring the children remained safe.

Michael Weston, a spokesman for DSS, sent a general response acknowledging that California had run out of options for many of the children but maintaining that DSS was meeting all of its obligations for monitoring and safeguarding the welfare of those sent away.

They have met with dozens of experts, driven thousands of miles to rescue Deshaun from one facility after another, kept in touch with their son via Skype when he was assigned to a horse ranch in a remote corner of Utah.

Through it all, they have repeatedly asked themselves a basic question: How can California not be capable of better for Deshaun? His problems — post-traumatic stress, mood disorders, violent outbursts — are significant.

Yet can it really be best for troubled, vulnerable children like Deshaun to be sent to other parts of the country in pursuit of adequate supervision and treatment? The Bectons recognize the challenge Deshaun presents. He consumes a daily diet of anti-psychotic medications to control his behavior.

The family has also experienced the risk of out-of-state placements firsthand. In May ofDeshaun was sent to a home in Kansas where he was once restrained by staff, face-down, for nearly 90 minutes. Officials in Kansas soon recommended Deshaun be sent to Mount Pleasant Academy, a horse ranch in Utah, which advertises itself as specializing in children addicted to pornography.

Officials at the ranch quickly realized it was an inappropriate placement for Deshaun, but before his parents could remove him, he wound up with scrapes and bruises from encounters with staff members. Just before Christmas, Deshaun entered a secure psychiatric facility in Utah, his third out-of-state placement.

The Bectons have learned to limit their expectations. They wish mostly that he will be safe, and that he might make some small progress toward stability with the right combination of medication and therapy.

But he is a great kid with a good heart. They spent their first night together in a hotel, and over the next several years mother and child bounced from emergency shelters to foster homes to the care of relatives. Court records show they ricocheted up and down the state, sometimes together, often apart.

When Deshaun was three, a young couple considered adopting him. The couple became overwhelmed. They eventually drove Deshaun to the Solano County Child Welfare office and left him. Enter, almost by accident, Veronice and Lamont Becton, a working class, African-American couple from Oakland and its suburbs.

The Bectons had casually discussed adoption for years. They both came from supportive, two-parent, middle class families, and they were proud of the life they had started together, one of stability and faith. They had one son, but also a spare bedroom room in their newly purchased, three-bedroom home in Antioch. The couple first agreed to take Deshaun in as a foster child.

When he arrived, all his possessions had been packed into a single trash bag. He stayed up far later than had their older son, Jonah. He would scream and cry. But two months in, it did not feel like anything the Bectons could not manage.

The ensuing weeks were something of a honeymoon. They had a party. There was cake and balloons and relatives. Deshaun was giddy from all the attention. But as home life took on its long-term routines— shifts at the hospital for Veronice; commutes to the firehouse for Lamont; Jonah to school and sports practice— Deshaun quickly unraveled. The night terrors intensified. Jonah had asked to share a room with Deshaun, to embrace the role of older brother. But that arrangement disintegrated as Deshaun kept Jonah up all night, throwing toys, smearing feces on the bedroom walls, carving deep scratch marks into the sheetrock with his tiny nails.

During the day, the Bectons did their best to treat him as a normal child. They got him in an art program, then pre-school, but soon the calls rang off the hook from teachers. He would bite and kick his classmates. It often manifests in extreme, sometimes violent episodes. She gave the Bectons a photocopy of a book on the subject. By first grade, Deshaun had to travel to a school in Concord, a minute drive. To get there, Deshaun boarded a bus each morning.

He started fights, he spit on other children. Eventually the school district opted to take him to school privately, in his own van. He and Veronice rattled off all the activities they experimented with to relieve their son of his boundless, often destructive energy: They tried creative outlets like music, art and therapy of all kinds.

They tried discipline, making him do community service when he misbehaved: The janitors grew to love the Bectons. A year ago, the list was close to Inthe Bectons got a taste of what California then considered the latest, best answer for children such as Deshaun: A team of social service workers would come to the Becton home and tend to Deshaun directly.

Soon there were five people, working in shifts, in and out of the home. The counselors were earnest and dedicated, but they struck the Bectons as young and inexperienced. California offered another option — a group home with trained staff and expert support. Soon enough, Deshaun was sent to a home in Davis. It was designated a Level 14, for the most challenging children. It had a campus and classrooms and dormitories. Psychiatrists and therapists would be on hand.

Deshaun arrived at the home, known as FamiliesFirst, in March He missed home and told his parents so in regular phone calls. But over the next several months, he progressed. He forged bonds with a counselor and a social worker, he spent hours in the arts center and the Bectons noticed that his emotions had steadied.

He could cool his temper using techniques his therapist had taught him. But FamiliesFirst came undone — quickly and disastrously. The staff was slashed. Children, including Deshaun, went missing for days or longer. The police were called hundreds of times — to save children or to arrest them. The Bectons felt the extent of that failure acutely on the evening of May 31, Meyer said Deshaun had fled the facility the night before and something terrible happened.

The Bectons raced to reclaim their boy. They took his picture when they picked him up that night. He appeared traumatized, sullen and scratched up, his eyes badly bloodshot. The home eventually was closed, and Deshaun wound up back in Antioch. The Bectons say the approach of government agencies in finding the right fit for Deshaun has often felt as random and scattershot as theirs. Some of this, they accept, is a consequence of his distinctive profile: But some of it feels like a lack of consistency and coordination on the part of the authorities sharekhan option trading brokerage properly diagnose and treat Deshaun.

His mood swings do not result from a diagnosed psychosis, and yet for years he has been prescribed anti-psychotic medications. His evaluations by government screening panels can feel exchange rates kuwait dinar to peso, and his resulting placements determined more by the availability of a bed somewhere — anywhere — than by a considered strategy for success.

The home serves 38 in binary options to winning formula in six houses on a bucolic 1,acre ranch.

The Bectons viewed the expanse of the campus as a selling point. They figured it might make it harder for Deshaun to run off.

But general motors trading stock price 1929 administrators did not mention that Milhous had recently been in trouble with the California Department of Social Services for a string of violations. Records show that inthe department found that a staff worker had allegedly molested a child resident on two separate occasions.

Inthe facility was cited for filing late incident reports. Inaccording to another strategia trader forex, the staff had strip-searched children. By Januarythe home was late on one of those, too, forcing the state to take the rare step of financially penalizing the home.

Staff turnover contributed to Deshaun changing therapists four times. In DecemberDeshaun ended forex asian session trading fleeing.

He disappeared with another boy for some four hours before he was found on the side of a highway wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and cowboy boots. He tax on forex trading in singapore that Milhous had filed the overwhelming majority of its read forex quotations reports on time.

Of the strip-searching incident, Petrie said the children had kept their shorts on during hunts for marijuana. It happened on a single occasion, he said, and the staff member been properly disciplined. Under California law, public school districts must provide an education to all students who live in them.

That is how Deshaun was sent to Utah. Many in the faith saw caring for disturbed children and their often desperate families as consistent with their mandate to do good works. Robert Crist, a psychiatrist and a co-founder of the Provo Canyon School, one of the earliest Utah homes for troubled children.

Roughly 40 of the facilities in Utah are members of the National Association for Therapeutic Schools and Programs, a national trade organization that represents such facilities in Washington, D.

But trouble has erupted over the years at homes throughout Utah. Perhaps the most forex factory down example involved a network of homes operated by a former worker at Provo Canyon. For more than a decade, the suit wound its way through state and federal courts. More than one judge recused themselves.

Ultimately, many of the claims in the suit were dismissed, and a settlement was reached on the remaining issues. In an emailed statement, Lichfield sought to distance himself from the troubled homes and discredit the complaints against him. But efforts at adopting national standards that would be enforced by federal regulators have been defeated, in part by the work of the national trade association.

Clifford Brownstein, executive director of the association, said the federal standards appeared aimed at punishing the worst actors in the business even when some programs are outstanding. Utah state laws earnest money said his members prefer working with state rather than federal regulators, he said. At Red Rock Canyon, a facility in St. George, a worker pleaded guilty in to multiple counts of sexually do you think money buys happiness three teenagers in his care, one of whom was just The facility did not properly report the abuse to Utah regulators or the police.

It turns out the owners of Red Rock Canyon also run the how do i get my pending money from paypal faster ranch Deshaun arrived at last August. Both the home, Mount Pleasant Academy, and the Bectons realized almost immediately it was not a good fit. A month after Deshaun arrived, Veronice received a copy of notes recorded by his therapist. Except they were for another child.

Meanwhile, administrators at the home concluded that Deshaun did not need treatment for issues of sexually aggressive behavior, something the home advertised itself as specializing in. What he needed, they wrote to the Bectons, was intensive, individualized care — something the home said it did not have the staff to provide.

They suggested he be sent to Red Rock Canyon. It would be his sixth placement in three years. The Bectons asked for time. In November, Veronice began arranging for Deshaun to come home for Thanksgiving.

The trip never happened, and Veronice had to settle for a Skype session intraday stock tips software her son on Nov. Deshaun, in his halting way, said it happened during a restraint triggered by a dispute he had with another student over a roll of duct tape. Veronice had to request a formal report, and when it utah state laws earnest money it said that Deshaun was out of control and had to be restrained.

According to the report, Deshaun gave the black eye to himself.

Veronice made plans to remove Deshaun immediately. And there was no way she was going to send him to Red Rock Canyon. Utah is not bereft of what appear to be quality options. Jerry Spanos, a former Mormon missionary, is the chief executive officer of the Heritage School, a acre residential treatment center set in a narrow valley that divides the outskirts of Provo forex ea torrent download the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains.

The campus is comprised of 11 gleaming bed dormitories. There is a seat performing arts center experience in the binary options earnings students have performed The Wiz and West Side Story. They are meant to get to know the kids as individuals: The building is tucked at the end of a curling gravel driveway westfield warrawong australia day trading hours a road that winds around a trailer park and an outcropping of trees.

There was little evidence the staff was prepared to return Deshaun to his mother. Deshaun eventually ambled into a basement where his mother waited. He was disheveled and bleary-eyed. There was dirt in his hair, dust on his blue jeans and mud on his black parka.

Veronice held Deshaun tight, and the two of them soon marched up the long, sloping driveway. They stopped at a nearby gas station so Deshaun could clean himself up. He used a restroom to change clothes while Veronice opened the trunk to organize a pile of jackets, sweatpants and gloves that lay loosely atop two half-full garbage bags: Another mostly held dirty socks and video game cords.

And now here he is like this all over again. Deshaun rambled on, his long tangents of thought sometimes leading to keen, surprising insights about himself and the world around him.

He was remarkably self-aware and honest about his condition. Veronice has grown accustomed to these versions of Deshaun.

He can be charming and funny and exceedingly polite. His imagination can be vivid, and Veronice over the years has marveled at his natural gift for art — he can make something remarkable out of almost anything, be it bottle caps or duct tape. And his family is involved? More than 15 years ago, California was shaken by a tragedy that grew out of sending children out of state with little oversight to ensure their safety.

He ultimately collapsed and succumbed to a respiratory infection. His chest cavity had swelled with two-and-a-half quarts of pus. California officials immediately demanded to know why a boy born in the state capital had been sent to Arizona as punishment for a juvenile offense.

California lawmakers quickly discovered the wave of children sent across state lines had been set in motion by two key factors:. Also, it was often cheaper. Pete Wilson signed a bill prohibiting California children from being sent to out-of-state facilities that permitted corporal punishment or barred parental visits. Wilson put the California Department of Social Services in charge of enforcing that mandate, and quickly California children were returned home.

But now, the tide has been reversed and the reasons are familiar enough. And its group homes proved such failures that the latest reform plan calls for drastically limiting them, as well. The plan pushes responsibility for troubled children back to individual counties, giving them some money to help fund alternatives, though it is unclear if that will be enough.

Some counties, challenged to deliver individualized services to children at home, have come to see the financial appeal of sending away children caught up in the juvenile justice system or grappling with profound mental health issues. In Long Beach, California, a group home for troubled children sinks into crisis. This past year, she sent away 56, mostly to Utah. Parents and advocates worry that DSS will struggle to monitor conditions of homes in other states and a review of some recent incidents suggests such worries are warranted.

Six months before the first riot, California inspectors visited the facility and gave it high marks. An inspector did not visit the home again until Feb. The inspector showed up not to investigate the fights, but to find a resident who had complained he was not being adequately fed. By the time the official from California arrived, the resident had already been moved. Nine days later there was another riot. The California inspector did not return to the facility for another two weeks.

In the meantime, he talked to three former students about the inadequate food claim. Over the next several days, the inspector confirmed a number of other allegations: Michael Weston, a spokesman for the Department of Social Services, said the department acted responsibly in its oversight of the children at the Nevada home. He said that by Junethe facility had reduced the number of children in its care from to The facility can house 84 children and is run by a company called Benchmark Behavioral Health Systems.

In reality, the facility is a pink stucco building sandwiched by Interstate 15 and a strip of auto repair shops and pawnshops. Benchmark officials did not respond to a request for comment. Kelly Criddle of the Utah Department of Health, which oversees the facility, said state law requires such psychiatric homes to be inspected at least once every five years, and that the Bountiful site had not been inspected by the state since March He said inspectors did not visit the facility to inquire specifically about the sex abuse charge, opting instead to accept documentation from the facility showing how it planned to address the issue.

Back in Antioch, the Bectons stand at one more place of uncertainty and apprehension in a year hunt for help. Its walls are adorned with photographs of his smiling face. In one, he horses around with Jonah and Lamont.

One photograph holds particular meaning. In it, Deshaun is wearing a Batman costume and is staring resolutely through a mask. There is a quote from Martin Luther King inscribed across his chest. The Bectons say they will not give up, but their optimism has been badly damaged. The best they can imagine for Deshaun is a life of modest independence and contribution. A safe place to sleep. As for the next facility that might assist him in that pursuit, their hopes are even more modest.

Out of Options, California Ships Hundreds of Troubled Children Out of State - ProPublica

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Have evidence of powerful people doing the wrong thing? ProPublica Journalism in the Public Interest. Home Investigations Projects Data MuckReads Get Involved About Us About. Veronice and Lamont Becton have grown accustomed to living without Deshaun in their home in Antioch, California.

Jessica Dimmock, special to ProPublica. Jonah Becton has done his best to be an attentive older brother to Deshaun. A drawing done by Deshaun. Mount Pleasant Academy in Utah treats children with sexually aggressive behavioral disorders. Kim Raff, special to ProPublica. Thomas Burton, a Salt Lake City attorney who has sued multiple Utah group homes on behalf of children who allege abuse in them.

Jerry Spanos says his Heritage School outside Provo is a model for how to care for troubled children. Veronice Becton hugs her son Deshaun outside a gas station. She had just retrieved him from his second out-of-state group home placement.

No Place for a Kid to Go In Long Beach, California, a group home for troubled children sinks into crisis. Benchmark Behavioral Health systems operates this locked psychiatric facility in Bountiful, Utah. Don't Miss Our Latest Stories.

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