This story discusses suicide and human traficking. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please call or text the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. Report human trafficking to the Human Trafficking Hotline: 888-373-7888.
A 13-year-old girl was physically restrained 14 times in 30 days while in an emergency placement where she sustained “bruising and swelling to the right side of her face and a black eye” after being “slammed to the ground by staff.”
She’s one of 304 Kentucky children in state custody who have recently slept in offices, state parks and other nontraditional settings when there was no approved foster or adoptive home available, according to a report released Monday by the Office of the Ombudsman. The office also looked at around 100 more who were placed with temporary caregivers while awaiting permanent placement.
After this girl’s emergency placement, where she was physically restrained, she returned to the cabinet’s care and stayed in an office, according to the report.
“During this time the child gained access to a computer cord and was able to wrap the cord around a CHFS social worker’s throat and strangled the social worker,” the report says. “As a result, the child was criminally charged with Assault in the 2nd degree and Terroristic Threatening and was placed in detention for 12 days.”
The report alleges systemic failures by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to provide proper care for children who have been housed in nontraditional settings while waiting for a traditional foster home to become available.
The Lantern has asked the cabinet for comment on the report and this story will be updated with its response.
This girl, who had an IQ of 76 and “a history of significant cognitive and behavioral impairments,” said “she has been neglected and physically and sexually abused in her previous placements and that her concerns were not taken seriously by (the cabinet),” the report states.
She also spent a total of 15 days in a cabinet office, according to the report, which is the latest in a series of reports that many children in state custody sleep in offices and other nontraditional settings while awaiting appropriate foster or long-term placements in a state with a significant shortage of those options.
As of March 1, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services reported that 8,753 Kentucky youth are in out of home placements. The state had about 4,516 available homes in 2025, according to data from The Imprint, a nonprofit news organization that covers children’s issues. That’s a shortfall of around 4,237, which the report acknowledges “directly drives the use of (non traditional placements) for children in the state’s care.”
Since 2023, a “mass exodus of foster parents,” some of whom cited “inadequate support” as a reason for leaving the program, has worsened the shortage of traditional foster care, says the report.
In 2023, The Courier Journal reported that a shortage of available and willing foster families was a factor in the state’s decision to house some youth in a Louisville office building. WDRB reported in 2024 that the practice had continued despite concerns raised by a Louisville judge.
The auditor’s office announced in 2024 that it would investigate the issue, and the Monday report covers case reviews from the ombudsman of nontraditional placements of youth in state custody between Jan. 1, 2023 and Oct. 29, 2024. The ombudsman is housed in the auditor’s office.
The findings: ‘Neither appropriate nor safe.’
According to the ombudsman’s report, it’s mostly males who end up in nontraditional placements. Many have mental health conditions requiring care including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), physical aggression, substance abuse, verbal aggression, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, criminal activity, suicidality, depression, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and incidents of leaving placement without authorization.
Youth in the state’s custody had the following nontraditional placements for the time frame examined by the ombudsman, according to the report:
- 269 placements in cabinet offices
- 17 placements in hotels
- 16 placements in state parks
- 11 placements in hospitals (not admitted)
- 7 placements in community centers
- 1 placement in a private child placing/private child caring office.
These nontraditional placements, the report says, are “neither appropriate nor safe.”
“These offices do not meet the standards Kentucky applies to licensed child care or residential placements, despite the commonwealth owing the same duty of care to every child in its custody,” the report says.
“In 81.2% (247) of cases, medical care, medication management, continuation of therapy, and school attendance were not readily apparent for the time period when the child was housed in a nontraditional setting,” the report says.
Still, the report praised local office staff for their efforts to care for youth: “At every office visited by Ombudsman staff, it was evident that frontline staff made reasonable and good-faith efforts to ensure child safety under difficult circumstances,” the report said. “However, these employees can only adequately complete tasks as they are trained and equipped to, and many are not trained in medication dispensation, behavioral intervention, and other necessary skills.”
Ombudsman researchers also report the state spent roughly $6.1 million — nearly $4,000 a day for every non-traditionally placed child — from Jan. 1, 2023 to Oct. 29, 2024.
“CHFS is spending a substantial amount of public resources to sustain a practice that is not in the best interest of Kentucky’s children,” the report states. “These funds, if redirected toward residential capacity, therapeutic foster care, or provider rate increases, could finance new placement beds annually.”
Therapeutic foster care is “a form of specialized foster care for youth with elevated mental, behavioral or medical needs,” according to KVC Kentucky. It provides a more structured environment and the providers receive more training, resources and support, in addition to being paid more.
Other findings in the 129-page report include:
- Most of the nontraditional placements in the timeframe examined were white children.
- Non-white children were more likely to spend more time in nontraditional placement. Black children spent an average of nearly 8 — 7.6 — days in nontraditional placement. Biracial children spent an average of 7 days and white children spent an average of 4.3 days. “This gap raises urgent questions regarding differential placement rejection, provider bias, and access to appropriate placements,” the report states.
- 130 children stayed for one day in nontraditional placements. Of those, nearly 59% were males and nearly 42% were females. They ranged in age from 0 to 18 with an average age of 13.
- 174 children had extended nontraditional placements. Of those, 64% were males and 36% were female. They ranged in age from newborn to 20 with an average age of 15.
- Nontraditional placements occurred statewide with Two Rivers Service Region, Northern Bluegrass Service Region and Cumberland Service Region making up nearly 52% of all cases.
- About 9% of the children in nontraditional placements had been incarcerated in the juvenile justice system.
- 83 children who had suicidal thoughts and behaviors were housed in office buildings without psychiatric care, suicide-safe design or trained clinical supervision. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 988.
- In more than half the nontraditional placement cases reviewed for the report, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services did not notify the relevant guardian ad litem. Guardians ad litem are court-appointed attorneys who represent children in dependency, neglect and abuse court cases. Kentucky needs more of them, especially in rural areas.
- About a third of the children – 34% — in the research sample were at risk for leaving placement without authorization — aka, running away. One girl who did this was a victim of human trafficking during the episode, according to the report. During her time out of place, while still in state custody, “she traded sexual favors for money and drugs with different adults.” Two of her abusers, as cited in the report, were in their 30s and 40s.
Report Recommendations
The ombudsman presents a long list of recommendations for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, including creating both “an actionable plan to close the foster home gap” and “a secure therapeutic facility with mandatory acceptance authority for children whose needs exceed the scope of foster care, therapeutic foster care, or existing residential programs.”
The report also says the cabinet has “failed to meaningfully engage Kentuckians ready and willing to assist with solving this issue. Untapped solutions exist within the kinship care, faith-based, and other communities.”
Among the many other suggestions from the ombudsman:
- Kentucky should implement Senate Bill 151, passed by the legislature in 2024 but unfunded, and “include targeted recruitment for kinship and fictive kin placements.” This law, if implemented, would free up money for Kentuckians who are raising minor relatives.
- The cabinet should work to recruit more and retain trauma-informed foster parents.
- The cabinet should facilitate the creation of an electronic system that would replace all or part of the current paper medical passport, as recommended by the General Assembly’s Program Review and Investigations Committee in 2012.
- The cabinet should upload all documents, forms, correspondence and other pertinent case information into iTWIST, creating a single, centralized case management system. This database stores information about abuse and neglect cases.
- The cabinet should provide children with clear timelines and daily updates regarding placement searches and anticipated moves to reduce uncertainty and anxiety.
Call for a special legislative session
In response to the report, Terry Brooks, the executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Gov. Andy Beshear must call a special session to specifically address child welfare.
“For a special session to bear meaningful results, Gov. Beshear needs to work closely with legislative leaders and the Auditor’s Office – and young people with this lived experience – before a call is issued to establish a consensual framework and a general agreement as to scope,” Brooks said. “And if a special session is architected well, then maybe — just maybe — fiscal issues, policy efforts and reforms in practice can converge to create a new day for Kentucky’s most vulnerable kids.”
The report highlights “a systemic meltdown due to a variety of anticipated and unanticipated factors that’s led to poor youth outcomes and a costly price tag for the state,” Brooks said. This is “not a case of a hiccup here and a hiccup there.”
“There are a number of ways to respond to a report this comprehensive and troubling,” Brooks said. “You can obfuscate and make it political, which is simply ethically unacceptable. You can nibble at the edges, which may inadvertently make the situation worse. You can act on one or two of the major findings through legislative taskforces, which is better than nothing but simply won’t create the change our kids need. Or you can swing big – and perhaps the biggest swing is a special session focused on child welfare and child welfare alone.”
This story has been updated with calls for a special legislative session from Kentucky Youth Advocates.
This article appears in Feb 14-28, 2026.