Napa volunteers hammer out plan to ease transition for foster children

By DAVID RYAN
Register Staff Writer

Linda Canan remembers the 9-year-old boy waiting in the Napa County Health and Human Services office when she was first brought on the job as the county’s Child Welfare Services director more than a year ago.

“It struck me my first day at work that there was a child sitting in the office at Old Sonoma Road,” she said. “I was asking staff, ‘Why was there was a child sitting in the office?’”

The boy had been taken from his family the night before to be placed into foster care. But without an immediate foster home placement, he spent the night sleeping in the adult psychiatric unit, waiting during the day at the administrative offices for someone to claim him.

Today, a recently formed nonprofit group is working with the county to ensure that incident is never repeated.

Foster Care Advocates got into high gear Tuesday, meeting with five construction company owners to iron out a project to remodel a downtown Napa house that will serve as a temporary receiving center for foster care children freshly removed from their homes.

The location and description of the center is kept secret to prevent parents who’ve had their children taken away from them from coming to take their children back.

The owners quickly pledged to donate their time to the project once they saw the house. Bell Products President Jim Asbury, also the leader of Foster Care Advocates and a former foster parent, pledged to cover the liability concerns for the project by entering into a $1 contract with the county. Material costs and worker time — estimated to be worth about $55,000 — will either be donated by the owners or paid for by Asbury, depending on what each owner ultimately agrees to give. Already, some owners talked about the project with other benefactors, who had shown interest in donating some furnishings and appliances.

With a remodel of the first floor of the two-story home, new foster children will be able to stay someplace more comfortable than a psychiatric ward — with beds, a kitchen and a television.

“It could be really home-like,” Canan said, emphasizing the kitchen. “Kids could have a snack or a meal.”

The idea of a receiving center for foster care children is somewhat new, with Contra Costa County the first to open one in 1996. Canan, who worked in Child Welfare Services in Contra Costa at the time, said before the center opened children were taken back to administrative offices while they waited for foster parents to claim them. Other counties run children’s shelters, similar to orphanages.

The Napa receiving center will become a versatile space, allowing siblings privacy from other children.

“You can close off rooms to separate kids from each other,” Canan said, adding that the whole project could be complete by the end of the year.

The receiving center will count as one of a list of things Foster Care Advocates is doing for the foster care community. The group has enlisted interest from local and state politicians, nonprofit agencies and others, raising money for foster children’s clothes, advocating for their interests, drumming up support for more foster parents and advocating for more baby-sitting care offered to foster parents.

There are an estimated 84,000 foster care children in the state and nearly 100 in Napa County at any given time.

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