This story was originally published by The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Sign up for The Imprint’s free newsletters here.
Five years ago, California reversed course on its longstanding practice of sending foster children and teens to far-flung residential centers in other states. Amid mounting scrutiny of abusive conditions at programs professing to provide mental health treatment, the state declared the facilities “lacking.”
But until this month, California continued to pay for hundreds of children adopted from foster care to live in many of these same facilities — a use of public funds one child welfare expert called “state-sponsored abandonment.”
That use has come to an abrupt end.
After The Imprint began asking the state’s 58 counties for data earlier this year, lawmakers added a new prohibition in a budget trailer bill: Beginning this month, the Adoption Assistance Program (AAP) — a state and federally funded benefit for parents who adopt from foster care — will no longer pay for most out-of-state residential care. The children will soon be headed back to California.
Jennifer Rodriguez, executive director of the nonprofit Youth Law Center, has spent decades protecting foster children in residential care, and helped negotiate the recent reform.
“If we decided that these facilities were too dangerous for children that were in foster care, I don’t know why we would have any sort of different calculation of the risk once those same children in foster care have moved to a family,” she said.
In an emailed statement, spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services Scott Murray, explained the change. “Children generally do best when placed with and/or around their natural support systems and family, particularly kin, which can be a challenge if an adopted child is placed out of state,” he stated. “Beginning July 1, 2025, the options available for adopted children receiving AAP will be in alignment with this goal.”
A first-ever public accounting
The Imprint’s investigation found that in the past five years, at least 676 former foster youth have been sent out-of-state at taxpayer expense to residential treatment programs in Utah, Montana, and as far off as North Carolina. The facilities often lack the rigor of California’s oversight and clinical requirements, and in some cases, have well-documented histories of violence, excessive punishment and sex crimes.
Currently, at least 112 adoptees live out of state, with monthly costs per child reaching as high as $17,000. County data shows that some parents continue to receive a monthly payment for adopted children — even while they are not living at home and the cost of their residential treatment and lodging is fully covered by public funds.
Murray emphasized that state and federal laws and regulations differ for adopted former foster children and those still in government custody.
“While in foster care, the county is responsible for the child’s placement and care,” he stated. “When a child is adopted, the county is no longer responsible for the child’s placement and care.” Murray added that adoptive parents “make all decisions regarding their child’s care and how AAP benefits may be used to meet their child’s needs.”
But children’s attorney Dawn Post, a child welfare expert whose practice focuses on “broken adoptions,” said the Adoption Assistance Program paying for out-of-state residential placements is problematic — and unusual among states.
“This is actually state-sponsored abandonment,” Post said.
The Imprint’s tally of adoptees sent out of state is the first of its kind, and is most certainly a significant undercount, as it does not include Los Angeles County. Just 26 of the state’s 58 counties responded to public records requests seeking information about how many children had been sent out of state through the Adoption Assistance Program in the past five years, where they were placed, and how much the county spent on the treatment.
Los Angeles County, home to the largest child welfare system in the state, asked for $4,048.40 to generate the data requested, at a cost of $100 an hour, which this news outlet could not afford.
Only 14 counties answered questions about costs. They reported spending a combined total of $53.2 million since 2020.
The counties that responded include small rural communities and large coastal cities. Those sending adoptees out of state most frequently include Fresno, Kern, Riverside and San Diego.
Counties identified 48 facilities across the country where they had sent adoptees, including Utah’s Zion Hills Academy. The financial resources page on its website makes clear to adoptive parents: “The State of California provides treatment funding for children who have been adopted through the California foster care system.”
Parents still paid while kids are sent off
The federal Adoption Assistance Program was created in 1980 to support families adopting children who would otherwise remain in long-term foster care, “with the intent to provide the security and stability of a permanent home through adoption,” according to the Department of Social Services. It’s rooted in an acknowledgement that children adopted from foster care have typically suffered significant trauma and as a result may require extra support and mental health care, potentially for years to come. Benefits can last until the young person turns 21.
In California, eligible adoptive families receive monthly stipends ranging from $100 or less to more than $1,000 per child for their costs of care, in addition to Medicaid and funding for specialized therapy. Coverage of out-of-home treatment is also available through the Adoption Assistance Program.
At least 11 counties continued to pay monthly stipends to parents — even though the child had been placed outside the home, with the costs of their residential care fully covered by that program. San Mateo County, for example, paid one adoptive family upwards of $48,000 during the more than three years their child was out of the home. Another family received more than $53,000 during a five-year period when the state also paid up to $13,535 a month for their child’s residential programs in Colorado, Utah and Georgia, according to records obtained by The Imprint.
Since 2020, Kern County has made 1,052 such payments to adoptive families while children weren’t in their care, totaling nearly $700,000.
Post, who advocated for legislation in New York to prevent adoption subsidies going to parents for children no longer in their care, said this is a misuse of Adoption Assistance Program funds.
“Subsidies should exist to keep children in safe, permanent homes, not to reward families who have effectively relinquished responsibility, while the same youth are warehoused in institutions at enormous public cost,” Post said. “It reveals a stark disconnect: the state remains financially committed to the adoptive placement on paper, while the child is left without family, stability, or even the minimal protections we’d insist on for any minor in care.”
Meg Applegate, CEO of Unsilenced, a California-based advocacy group representing former residents of treatment programs, said using taxpayer funds this way does not help the adopted children it is supposed to provide for. More effective spending would focus on “support that starts early, happens locally, and actually helps keep kids stable at home with their families.”
“This program was meant to help remove financial burdens to help families stay together, not to fund last-resort placements in facilities hundreds of miles away,” Applegate said. “Instead of pouring money into out-of-state institutions that have the potential for harm, we should be investing in real support for families here.”
Problems rife at out-of-state facilities
Adopted children are far more likely than their peers to enter residential care. Despite accounting for just 2% of the U.S. child population, they represent an estimated 25% to 30% of those living in institutions, according to a 2016 study published in Residential Treatment for Children & Youth.
It can be difficult for parents to find available beds and a program that meets every child’s needs in a state like California — where there are stricter regulations on youth treatment facilities. Critics of the recent policy shift that limits subsidies for out-of-state placements include providers who serve panicked parents, and the trade group representing local child welfare agencies.
The California Welfare Directors Association (CWDA) recommended using out-of-state programs for adoptees more sparingly, rather than ending the practice altogether, limiting placements to specially certified facilities and requiring case reviews by trained consultants to determine if residential care is necessary.
“CWDA had concerns with a proposed ban because adoptive parents have complete care and custody of adopted children, and a ban on out-of-state placements could result in children coming back into foster care,” executive director Carlos Marquez III said in an emailed statement.
Still, many facilities where California adoptees have been sent do not meet the state’s standards of care, which include limits on the use of locked facilities, seclusion rooms and physical restraints.
Out-of-state institutions can also house youth for longer periods of time than local programs. Some counties reported out-of-state placements lasting more than three years. By contrast, California’s in-state option — short-term residential treatment programs — limits stays to 18 months. On average, children remain approximately eight and a half months, according to the California Alliance for Children and Family Services, a member organization representing youth treatment programs.
California’s adoptees have been sent to numerous facilities in other states with well-documented cases of abuse and unsafe conditions.
They include at least six programs operated by the now-defunct Sequel Youth and Family Services, where incident reports show children were raped, slapped and punched by staff members: Clarinda Academy and Woodward Academy in Iowa, Normative Services Inc. in Wyoming, Falcon Ridge Ranch and Red Rock Canyon School in Utah, and Mingus Mountain in Arizona. Several were shut down or sold off after abuse and misconduct were uncovered.
In the last five years, California adoptees have also been sent to:
- Havenwood Academy in Cedar City, Utah, which was put on a “corrective action plan” in 2018 after law enforcement discovered staffers zip-tied teenage girls at the wrists and ankles and forced them to sit in horse troughs filled with dirty water for up to 30 minutes as punishment. School officials confirmed to regulators they’d been using the tactic for discipline for three years.
- Cinnamon Hills Youth Crisis Center in St. George, Utah, which state officials sanctioned in 2022 for violating rules that youth be free from “cruel, severe, unusual or unnecessary practice,” including being spanked, hit, shaken or otherwise inflicted with pain to induce compliance.
In 2018, a staffer was fired after taking a resident into a “blind spot” from cameras in a “time out room,” where he pushed her up against a wall and “fondled” her. Another incident report stated a child had been choked and thrown against a dresser by a staff member, sustaining “visible injuries on his neck” that appeared to police as signs the boy was “strangled in some way.”
- Three Points Ranch in Hurricane, Utah, closed abruptly in February after years of documented problems, including “improper restraints and punishments meant to humiliate children,” according to local reporting.
Havenwood Academy’s CEO Ken Huey pointed to his organization’s website that rebuts a number of claims, notes that Havenwood “does not use painful restraints,” and calls out “professional critics” who “spread false information.”
In an email he stated: “All incidents that have landed in the press have been there because WE self-reported. Nobody has caught us doing something outside statute. If we make a mistake, we call it in ourselves.”
The other directors of the above centers did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Justin Nielson — head of Utah’s White River Academy, which receives roughly 13% of its residents through California’s Adoption Assistance program — said he feels his industry is too often unfairly maligned by such accusations.
Disgruntled, vocal former residents skew the narrative, he said, while those who had good experiences at facilities like his and are now doing well are less inclined to go public about trouble they got into as teens.
Nielson acknowledged that some residential programs have “done things they’re not supposed to do.”
Taking away the out-of-state option, though, could have far-reaching consequences, he added. Without the assurance of post-adoption financial support for these placements, Nielson said he worries fewer California families will be comfortable adopting from foster care.
“By the time they get to an out-of-state resource, they’ve exhausted everything in California, as far as what can be provided for their child,” Nielson said. The new law for them will be, “like running into a brick wall. There will be no resources for these families.”
‘Warehouses of neglect’
For years, critics of residential treatment programs have grown in prominence. In addition to media exposés, watchdog organizations and the federal government have released a series of damning reports highlighting concerns of mistreatment and poor oversight. Former residents, who call themselves survivors of the “troubled teen industry,” have shared their stories publicly, including celebrity-turned-advocate Paris Hilton.
Maxwell, a former foster youth from California identified by her last name to protect her confidential child welfare record, was sent out of state to two Utah facilities. When she complained about abuse at the first center, she was transferred to Red Rock Canyon School — a Sequel program where adoptees have also been sent. It closed in 2019 over abusive and dangerous conditions.
“A lot of kids were complaining about a lot of serious problems,” Maxwell said in a 2020 interview. “There was clearly evidence in front of them that we weren’t being treated right.”
Last year, a Congressional committee report slammed youth treatment centers as “warehouses of neglect” where risk of harm to children is “endemic to the operating model.”
“Children are suffering as a result,” it stated. “Their lives are ending before they even begin — systematically, by design.”
Los Angeles-based therapist Jeanette Yoffe, an adoption specialist, said residential treatment can be necessary in some cases where children’s violent or self-harming behavior cannot be safely managed at home. Yoffe sometimes refers clients to residential treatment centers in other states and has seen them return with improved coping and self-reflection skills, and a greater awareness that they’re not alone in the struggles they face.
But being sent away can also confirm deeply held fears of being unlovable and unwanted, she said, especially if young people don’t “buy in” to residential programs as a necessary treatment.
“It can be extremely emotionally hurtful” and “re-traumatize them,” said Yoffe, who is herself an adoptee. “There’s already a level of adoption trauma, of being separated from your birth family abruptly. And then to be removed again from your adoptive family, it can be incredibly painful and shameful for that child.”
California reverses course on lower standard for adoptees
Adoptive parents — who have full custody over their children — can place them in a treatment facility of their choice through their own insurance or private funds.
And until this month, sending adopted children to far-off facilities at taxpayer expense through the Adoption Assistance Program did not violate state law.
But the practice stands in stark contrast with a law passed four years ago that bars the state from placing foster children out of state.
California legislators passed that law in response to a 2020 joint investigation by The Imprint and The San Francisco Chronicle, Far From Home, Far From Safe. That reporting — sparked by the death of 16-year-old Cornelius Fredericks, who was killed by staff at a Michigan youth facility — revealed that thousands of California foster youth had been sent by county agencies to private, for-profit institutions across the country that had well-documented cases of staff abuse. Children suffered broken bones, black eyes and head injuries at privately run Sequel facilities, state investigative records show.
The exposure prompted the state to act. Counties brought all their foster children back to the state and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that banned the practice of sending foster youth across state lines for treatment. The state also allocated $100 million to develop more robust local treatment options.
Upon learning that children adopted from foster care whose placements are funded through the Adoption Assistance Program did not qualify for protection under the new statute, The Imprint set out to investigate.
In March, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services said the state had no records responsive to such a request, and suggested only local child welfare agencies could provide the information.
By May, the department was proposing changes to the state Legislature. Even stronger provisions appeared in the final budget passed in June.
Effective July 1, adopted children in the Adoption Assistance Program living in institutions outside of California will be brought home as soon as their existing placement agreements expire. These agreements can be up to 18 months long, plus a 60-day transition period to prepare to come home. The agreements will not be eligible for renewal.
Out-of-state funding will continue for families who have moved but still receive post-adoption support from California. Those households will be permitted to use state funds for facilities in their new home states.
The impact of the change, uncertain future
Residential treatment providers and the association representing county welfare directors have expressed concern that from this month on, California has eliminated an option for families who have adopted high-needs children from foster care before ensuring the state has sufficient alternatives in place.
Adrienne Shilton, vice president of public policy and strategy at the California Alliance of Child and Family Services, said in-state residential providers struggle to meet the current demand for beds, due to staffing shortages and low pay rates.
Under the new law, “we’re going to have major capacity challenges because we’ve already sort of been bleeding,” Shilton added. “That’s just an additional pressure on top of many pressures.”
Shilton said for in-state providers to meet the needs of the children, California needs to increase payment rates for residential therapeutic treatment programs and remove time limits and other barriers to intensive, wraparound services intended to prevent the need for higher-end care.
The Department of Social Services spokesperson said he’s not aware of any additional funding available to ensure in-state treatment is available for the children who otherwise may have been sent out of state.
But attorney Rodriguez — a former foster youth sent to group homes as a teenager — said the number of adopted foster children sent out of state is “actually a manageable group of young people” to spare no expense for.
She said the problem could be solved by better analysis of each child’s case, as well as conversations with adoptive parents about what led them to look outside California for treatment. If options aren’t available locally, they must be created, she said.
“I don’t think we’ve ever done a very good job at truly trying to build and utilize the community-based supports, the family-based interventions,” Rodriguez said. “Evidence, science, research is all clear: These are actually the only things that we know work.”
Sara Tiano is a senior reporter for The Imprint.
Jeremy Loudenback contributed to this report. Loudenback is a senior reporter for The Imprint.
The Imprint is a partner of The Intersection and CVJC.
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