Tribes seek foster care for kids in need, but strained resources lead some to group homes

• Group homes for troubled teens can serve a purpose, but in the wake of Emily Pike’s disappearance and death, many advocates say the system needs reforms.
• Some Arizona tribes are finding new challenges amid Trump administration budget cuts that reduced available resources.
• Kids who land in group homes can find themselves with no way to contact friends and no information about how long they will remain there. Advocates say foster families are more important than ever.

In the weeks after the brutal slaying of Emily Pike, the 14-year-old San Carlos Apache girl who went missing from a group home in Mesa, some child welfare experts say the system meant to protect Native kids in need is faltering due to lack of foster homes or kinship care options.

Some experts and young people who have experienced foster care and group homes agree. Others say the homes serve a purpose, particularly for medically or behaviorally fragile youth, but believe their use should be sparing and limited.

Tribes challenged to support families in crisis and kids in need of care are even more challenged to serve vulnerable people after Trump administration budget cuts. Tribes whose social services agencies run low on resources send kids to the state for care. And many of those kids end up in group homes.

Foster care agencies say they encounter prospective foster and adoptive parents who prefer young children or infants, believing that older children will be disruptive and even dangerous to younger family members. That can leave group homes as one of the few options for some of those kids.

That leaves individuals to carry some of the burden, like the mother who helps train and support other foster parents and the adoptive dad who brought a troubled 8-year-old boy home more than 30 years ago. David Gerrold said he preferred an older child because they already have personalities and feel the lack of a loving, stable home more than infants or toddlers.

“An older child just felt more appropriate to me,” said Gerrold, a writer known for his television work.

“When he moved in, it was an adventure for both of us. We just fit together very, very well.”

Kids in congregate care are at risk for traffickers, toxic stress and other harms

Arizona has the highest rate of youth cared for in group homes and institutions, a practice known as congregate care. Nonprofits Fostering Alliance Arizona and Children’s Action Alliance said the state houses 17% of all kids it cares for in its out-of-home system in group homes, and 11% of all children age 12 and under are housed in these institutions. The national average is 3%.

A report by the Children’s Bureau, an office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that children in out-of-home care, such as foster care or congregate care, including group homes or other such institutional care settings, are at risk to fall prey to human traffickers. Hard statistics are hard to come by but in 2021, an estimated 19% of the children reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as missing from foster care were trafficked into sex work.

In a 2019 interview, Valaura Imus-Nahsonhoya, a nationally-recognized human trafficking expert, said Native girls and women are especially prized by sex traffickers.

“We’re associated with fetishes,” such as long hair, exotic looks that sex patrons perceive as Asian or Hispanic, she says. ”We could look like anything.”

Imus-Nahsonhoya, a member of the Hopi Tribe, is the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons coordinator in the Arizona Governor’s Office of Tribal Relations.

TJ Fowler, a former foster child and group home resident, said they feared for the safety of certain kids who ran away from the group home they had lived in as a teenager because of Arizona’s reputation as a hot spot for trafficking.

“It’s easy to to move around the state,” they said.

“When those people went AWOL and we wouldn’t hear from them, that would be a serious concern, a real scary thing to hear about.”

Many tribes are hard-pressed to address families and kids in crisis. Health programs, including behavioral health and social services, have long been underfunded. But tribes and tribal health organizations are worried about proposed restructuring of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that at least one organization fears could cut essential grants and personnel.

The cabinet-level agency oversees and funds tribal health programs as well as the Indian Health Service. It also manages tribal set-asides and tribal liaisons to a variety of agencies including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services known as SAMHSA, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the CDC, NIH and other programs.

The National Indian Health Board is one such organization. On April 1, the board sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. requesting that tribes be consulted about HHS’s plans and the impact they could have on tribal nations.

Group home resident: ‘I didn’t know where I was or how long I would be there’

Fowler knows the foster and congregate care system well after spending time in a group home and later in a foster home in their middle teen years.

Fowler, 27, is a youth leader at Fostering Advocates Arizona, which is housed at and supported by Children’s Action Alliance to raise the voices of young adults who have experienced foster care.

“I entered a group home at age 15,” said Fowler, a citizen of the Navajo Nation.

They had been living in the East Valley, but were placed in a group home in the far Northwest Valley. They had no way to contact their friends or even knew what part of the county they were in.

They were assigned a bed but received no information about how long they would be there.

Fowler dealt with not knowing how to reach their friends or siblings, and with a revolving door of staff, the stresses of a new high school and hearing other kids crying at night because of their own situations.

But they admitted it could have been worse:

“Some girls showed up with a few things in a trash bag,” Fowler said.

They were lucky to have a caseworker who worked to build a relationship. Eventually, one of Fowler’s friends was able to contact them. Later, the foster home that had been caring for Fowler’s siblings took them in, reuniting the kids.

Fowler now advocates for transitioning youth to extended foster care settings, which they said was a better option for positive and affirming care on a personal level. They also present to groups about the Foster Care Bill of Rights to help youth understand their rights and how to advocate for themselves.

“We know that youths that experience congregate care tend to have poorer outcomes in life,” Fowler said. But, “If you place kiddos in a loving setting and put the work in to serve their needs, they will find success, they will find growth.”

Missing girl: Slain teen Emily Pike ran away to see family and friends, group home CEO says

Adoption and foster care programs support, train prospective parents, provide cultural touchstones for Native foster kids

Advocates for kids in need of out-of-home care, who share a passion for kids in need of care, are often themselves adoptive or foster parents.

Ross Funk and Elisia Manuel are two of those parents. Both Funk and Manuel have fostered and adopted children, and both now work to train and support prospective parents.

Funk works with Aid to Adoption of Special Kids-Arizona which supports and trains potential foster and adoptive parents. Manuel is with StepStone Family & Youth Services and also runs her own foster care support organization Three Precious Miracles, which provides Native youth in care with cultural connections.

Two of Funk’s four kids, now adults, were adopted.

Manuel, an Apache descendant, and her husband, Tecumseh, an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community, have had as many as four small children in their home, and have adopted three of them, including two siblings.

Funk said that AASK focuses on finding family relationships for children in foster care. Like others, AASK also provides training and resources foster families will need as they navigate the system to give kids a loving and stable environment.

But some elements of foster parenting took Funk by surprise. After months of time and effort getting licensed and ready, the Funks finally took a child into their home.

“One of my first ‘aha’ moments as a foster parent was realizing they didn’t want to come to our home,” he said.

“I thought (becoming a foster parent) was like a high point moment until I saw the little guy’s eyes looking at me like a deer in the headlight, and realized that he had a much different perspective.” Funk said.

That moment drove home the point that kids moving into an out-of-home placement are looking for a sense of security and normalcy, he said.

“It’s much easier to find that in a family setting where there’s a day-to-day routine with the same people, not employees on shift work or different staff members on the weekends.”

Funk said he didn’t want to dismiss congregate care out of hand. “They serve a purpose,” he said.

The state offers a $300 monthly stipend for kinship care, but Manuel said that wasn’t enough. That’s one reason she started Three Precious Miracles. The nonprofit sources and distributes beds, clothes, backpacks and shoes. TPM also holds cultural classes like ribbon skirt crafting and beading classes to give Native kids in care cultural touchstones.

But most of all, Manuel said, “If we want to reduce congregate care we need to increase foster care.”

She also pointed out a fact that most other sources The Arizona Republic interviewed share: “We get people who want babies all the time,” Manuel said. But there’s not enough people willing to take in teenagers.

“Older kids need people to open their hearts and homes too.”

Reuniting: Native families welcome children home, but ‘long road’ not over for others

DCS: ‘We have plenty of foster families for kids 8 and under ‒ it’s the older kids who are challenging’

Tanya Abdellatif agreed with Manuel about what age group prospective foster families prefer. She’s the assistant director for foster care and post-permanency supports at the Arizona Department of Child Services.

“We have plenty of foster families for kids 8 and under,” she said. “It’s the older kids who we have a challenge placing.”

Abdellatif also agreed with Funk that group homes can sometimes be necessary. In some cases, she said, medically fragile kids need more specialized care.

The Arizona Republic reported that Pike was one of those kids in need of specialized behavioral health care. She spent a year in a secure behavioral health facility before being sent to the Mesa group home she ran away from shortly before her murder.

A teen’s story: Sexual assault, suicide attempts: Emily Pike’s painful past lingers after death

And, Abdellatif said, when a foster home for multiple siblings isn’t available, the children are placed in a group home setting to keep them together.

“The average foster home has 2.3 kids,” she said. “But some of the families we receive have four, five or even six kids.” That makes it harder to find a home that can take all of the siblings, she said.

Abdellatif said that ideally, kids are placed in group homes for short periods while DCS finds the right placement for each child’s circumstances.

DCS’s priority is first to place a child with its family. “We launched a kinship support service program,” she said. “We also help identify struggling families and where they need support.”

The Department of Child Safety’s strategic plan said the agency aims to reduce the number of kids in congregate care to 10.5% or less by June 30. Progress, she said, is slow and steady. “We don’t want to do dramatic moves.” That’s because moving kids around too often is detrimental. “Sometimes the kids don’t want to trust and get hurt again,” she said.

Abdellatif said the program to reduce congregate care is showing results. “Out of about 1,000 referrals through December 2024, 45% of the kids had been moved to family settings.”

Adoptive dad: ‘Adopt to fill a hole in the child, not in you’

While many people seek to give children a stable setting as foster parents, others take the next step: adoption. One famous adoptive dad says it’s the best thing he ever did.

Gerrold is the creator of one of television’s most beloved creatures: tribbles. He wrote the Star Trek episode introducing the furry critters to viewers and fans, and is also the creator of many other worlds and universes on television and on the page.

Over his nearly 60-year career, Gerrold has been showered with awards, acclaim and accolades from his many fans and from critics.

But Gerrold says his greatest achievement is his son, Sean, whom he adopted at age 8 after the boy languished in foster care and group homes.

After carefully researching adoption, including a pivotal book on the subject, Gerrold decided on an older child, who he said were more interesting.

“They already have a personality; they have wants and needs and they can communicate,” he said. “And you don’t have to change diapers.”

Legendary science fiction writer Harlan Ellison wrote a character reference for Gerrold: “‘Any kid lucky enough to be adopted by this guy will have a six-foot playmate who picks up after him.’”

Gerrold said that older children need a loving home more than a baby. “The older child is aware of ‘Why don’t I have a mom or dad?’” He said the emotional burden an older child carries is more intense than for infants.

Prospective adoptive parents need to evaluate their own reasons for bringing a child in need of love and stability into their home. After an orientation session, he said, almost none of the 30 to 40 people there struck Gerrold as serious about adoption.

“There was a little old lady who wanted someone to take care of her when she got old,” he said. But the caseworker set her straight. “‘This is not what adoption is about, not fixing a hole in your life, but fixing a hole in the kid’s life.’”

The road to Sean becoming a healthy, happy and productive husband and dad of two was sometimes harrowing. “I was absolutely, totally committed to his well-being and he’d never had that before in his life,” Gerrold said. It took Sean time to understand that.

“One day he threw a tantrum,” he said. “Part of it was testing.” Kids sometimes test the relationship, because if it fails, he said, they want to be the ones who break it, as it’s the only control they have. But Sean hadn’t reckoned with a determined dad.

“I was holding him in a basket hug and I just said, ‘it won’t work. You’re stuck with me.’ And I just kept saying that over and over. ‘I love you. I’m not giving up on you.’” And that, Gerrold said, is what kids need: love and commitment to fill the hole that foster kids carry around.

The experience led Gerrold to write the novella “The Martian Child,” which won several major science fiction awards and was made into a movie.

But Gerrold didn’t totally escape diapering; his grandkids took care of that.

Tribe, state leaders call for probes and new Indigenous missing person alert

But while some parents rejoice in their chosen families, the state and tribes are determining ways to prevent the next tragedy.

Arizona State Sen. Carine Werner, R-Scottsdale, called for a probe of the DCS’ group home regulations in response to Pike’s murder. Werner heads the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

The San Carlos Apache Tribe also asked that the state investigate and tighten regulations for state-licensed residential group homes.

In addition, a bill making its way through the Arizona Legislature would establish an Indigenous person alert system to raise awareness of missing tribal members who law enforcement feels are endangered.

“We appreciate Representative (Teresa) Martinez and her co-sponsors, Reps. Brian Garcia, Mae Peshlakai and Myron Tsosie for introducing HB 2281,” San Carlos Chairman Terry Rambler said in a statement.

And Fowler noted that another bill to modify a foster youth permanency pilot program and establish more reporting requirements and procedures by DCS when the agency places a child in congregate care is close to becoming law. They said advocates feel the bill may help decrease the numbers of kids in group care settings.

Tribes and DCS consult on a variety of child safety and welfare issues including shared cases. And, the Navajo Nation and the Pascua Yaqui Tribe have agreements or memorandums of understanding with DCS on child custody and Indian Child Welfare Act issues.

Can’t foster or adopt? Other ways you can help kids

Funk said that not everybody is a good candidate to foster or adopt kids. But, he said, people can still help. AASK offers a mentor program where people who want to help a child in care but can’t make the commitment to become a foster or adoptive parent can still support a child by serving as a volunteer mentor.

“We actually prioritize our mentors to be matched with kids in group homes because we realized those kids in group homes quickly realize every adult now in their life now is paid to be there, and really doesn’t care about them. Maybe they care about that, but they’re paid to care about it.”

Volunteers are also welcome to help shepherd kids through the court system. Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASAs, serve as a child’s advocate. CASA of Arizona trains and supports qualified, compassionate adults who speak for a child and protect that child’s rights as their cases are litigated. CASAs often form strong bonds with the child for whom they’re advocating.

Manuel continues to hold cultural gatherings for foster kids, and said she has started reaching out to group homes with Native youth in residence. She’s also considering how to “wrap our arms around them totally so we can give them the support they need,” including talking circles and smudging ceremonies.

Gerrold said that one way people can help is simply providing kids in care with new clothes and toys. “When Sean was 6, he and some of his friends in the group home where they were living went to a Toys “R” Us store and filled carts with toys and walked out,” he said.

The reason? They weren’t provided any by the institution. “Kids get the bare minimum,” Gerrold said. “But the manager was kind and let each of them have one toy.”

When Sean first arrived, Gerrold said all the boy had were hand-me-down clothes.

“So every three weeks or so, we’d go to department store JC Penney for new clothes and shoes.

“Sean said he was teased at school because all the kids knew he was a foster kid because of his hand-me-downs,” Gerrold said. So he made a decision that the growing boy could have whatever clothes he wanted — even when, as a teenager, Sean’s choice was $100 tennies.

“Kids are so tied up with clothes as part of their identity,” he said. “Just having new clothes gives them a boost.”

Gerrold suggested that state care systems could reach out to clothing manufacturers or large store chains to provide those kids with new clothes.

“Maybe there could be corporate sponsorship of foster kids,” he said. “That would give them good corporate PR.”

Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter @debkrol.

Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.