California has spent years developing some of the nation’s strictest rules for residential treatment of foster children. The state bars for-profit providers and limits the number of children in each facility. It posts complaints and investigations to a public website, including links to detailed inspection notes, incident reports and follow-up the facility must complete to address concerns.
But when it comes to staff physically restraining troubled children who’ve suffered abuse and neglect — emergency interventions that can be traumatizing for the kids involved and lead to further injury — there is too little oversight, critics say. In moments of crisis, children can have their arms or legs immobilized or be held by multiple adults at once — yet few outside these residential facilities would ever know.
Legislation authored by Sen. Shannon Grove of the state’s Central Valley aims to change that, by requiring the state to publicly report all use of restraints in its licensed care centers for foster youth. Her law has attracted an unusual amount of attention due to one of its chief proponents: celebrity heiress Paris Hilton. Since enduring harrowing stays in group homes in California and elsewhere, the entrepreneur-turned activist has spent years fighting for more oversight and accountability of the “troubled teen industry.”
“The evidence of abuses happening in these facilities is too widespread and too obvious to ignore any longer,” Hilton said during an April press conference at the state Capitol. “Advocates like myself shouldn’t have to be the ones to shine our spotlights to know the truth.”
Physical restraints in group care settings for foster youth are not uncommon and can be necessary, industry experts maintain, when youth in emotional crisis are acting out in ways that could cause harm to themselves or others. In California, facility staff must be trained in a variety of “de-escalation” methods, among them physical restraints. They cannot be deployed as punishment, or as a replacement for more effective calm-down techniques.
Grove’s Senate Bill 1043 focuses on greater transparency of when the method is used on kids. It would require the state to create a public dashboard detailing every physical restraint in state-licensed youth treatment facilities. Incidents involving children placed in seclusion would also have to be documented. Under the proposed law, thorough explanations of each incident would have to be provided to the child and their parents or legal guardians.
In a tough budget year given the state’s deep shortfall, Grove’s bill dedicates funding for creating the online dashboard and the staff to maintain it, which the Department of Social Services estimates would cost an annual $1.7 million. The senator hopes this doesn’t hinder its passage, and believes the current estimate about its cost is inflated. The bill is currently awaiting approval from the Senate Appropriations Committee.
At the April press conference, a tearful Zoe Schreiber of Oakland weighed in on the importance of the legislation, urging lawmakers to vote in favor. The former foster youth shared a personal account of being restrained and secluded at centers elsewhere in the country that claimed to be therapeutic. In one incident that stands out, she said that at age 13 she was held by multiple adults, and recalled the restraint taking place in a mud puddle.
“These actions stick with us, impacting our mental and physical well-being for decades,” Schreiber said. “I will never forget the knee in my shoulder, the cold of my soaked clothes, the eventual numbness in my legs, my pleas of ‘I can’t breathe.’ In that moment I was stripped of my dignity, autonomy and any hope that the staff were there for me, to help and protect me.”
“We spent a lot of money bringing all these kids home and condemning those organizations outside of California. We want to make sure that there’s transparency to make sure that these kids are getting the care they need.”
— California State Sen. Shannon Grove
In an interview and in her public statements, Sen. Grove has said she introduced her bill in part as a response to a 2020 Imprint and San Francisco Chronicle investigation, Far From Home, Far From Safe. The investigation revealed that thousands of California foster youth had been sent out of state to for-profit residential treatment centers with extensive histories of staff abuse, in violation of state law. The article prompted California to bar the practice, and to commit $100 million for better treatment closer to home.
Grove said her legislation aims to further those reforms, by ensuring the children who now remain in California residential facilities are as safe as they can be.
“We spent a lot of money bringing all these kids home and condemning those organizations outside of California,” Grove told The Imprint. “We want to make sure that there’s transparency to make sure that these kids are getting the care they need.”
Department of Social Services spokesperson Scott Murray said he could not comment on pending legislation. But he emphasized that his department’s licensing division collects reports from facilities whenever restraints are used on children, and investigates “any potential licensing violation.” He also noted that current law bars isolating a child in a locked room, as well as face-down and “chemical restraints” — medication used, often via injection, to subdue crises.
Under current law, California state authorities are required to collect and publicly disclose detailed information each time children are restrained in Short-term Residential Therapeutic Programs, or STRTPs. The facilities replaced what was once described in the state as “group homes,” placements designed for children and teens with behavioral health needs when family homes aren’t an option.
But the existing law has a loophole, Grove and other critics say. The state only has to publish data on restraints if it can be accomplished “within existing resources,” and therefore it isn’t produced for the public.
Even lawmakers can’t get the information, Grove said, noting that her staff has spent months requesting the data from the Department of Social Services, to no avail. Department officials told the senator’s office they had the data, but as yet have not complied with the ongoing records requests.
“Some of California’s most vulnerable children are housed in these STRTPs, including foster children who have been sexually exploited,” Grove said in a recent hearing on the bill. “With this knowledge, we must require the highest level of transparency in the care for this vulnerable population.”
In interviews for the Far From Home, Far from Safe reporting project, former foster youth told reporters about how disturbing it was to be restrained, and to witness other children being physically restrained in out-of-state facilities. While the restraints did not occur in California, the state’s kids suffered the aftermath.
“The restraints were abuse, let’s be clear,” DaeJah Seward of Sacramento said. Seward was sent to Clarinda Academy in Iowa in 2012 when she was 16, but her memories remain vivid. Years later, she recalled one restraint involving a visibly pregnant teen; the way staff manipulated her had her knees jamming into her belly.
The Imprint found numerous documented incidents of children in out-of-state facilities who had been seriously injured as a result of physical restraints, withstanding concussions, black eyes and broken bones. Shortly before nationwide Black Lives Matters protests in 2020, 16-year-old foster youth Cornelius Fredericks, a Black child, died after 11 staffers at Lakeside Academy in Michigan pinned him face-down on the cafeteria floor, ignoring the young man’s cries of “I can’t breathe.” In 2021, Cedric Lofton, a 17-year-old foster youth in Kansas, died under similar circumstances after being brought to a juvenile justice intake center during a mental health crisis.
‘Important and needed’ transparency
The care of vulnerable children and teens is something Grove said she feels strongly about — in part due to her own experience as a teen spending time in juvenile hall. Last year, she authored a successful bill that toughens punishments for people convicted of youth sex trafficking. One of two SB 1043 fellow authors, Sen. Aisha Wahab, grew up in California’s foster care system. A third author, Sen. Angelique Ashby, has spoken out publicly about raising a child on her own.
Hilton has advocated for numerous bills nationwide focused on youth residential facilities, as well as the federal Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, which calls for a national database tracking the use of residential care and ways to improve the industry. She recently publicized abuse of children at Atlantis Leadership Academy, an American-owned group home in Jamaica. In April, five academy staffers were arrested and charged with several crimes, including assault and “child cruelty.”
Eyeing Hilton’s impact, Grove’s team asked the star if she’d work on SB 1043. Hilton’s 11:11 Media Impact — a company dedicated to fighting “institutional child abuse” — is listed as a bill sponsor.
The legislation’s estimated $1.7 million price tag would pay for one year to develop a dashboard, which would be made public in 2026. That same amount would be required each year to maintain the database, according to the Department of Social Services.
Given California’s current shortfall, estimated to be as much as $73 billion, few new bills with high dollar figures attached are expected to pass. But Sen. Grove contends that the $1.7 million estimate is inflated, and noted that the department is already collecting the needed data. She cited several similar dashboards in California, including one with data on food stamps and another regarding greenhouse gas emissions, costing taxpayers $210,000 or less, Grove said.
“In that moment I was stripped of my dignity, autonomy and any hope that the staff were there for me, to help and protect me.”
— Former foster youth Zoe Schreiber
Compared with other states, California offers a high level of transparency about the inner workings of state-licensed facilities for children and teens, including day care centers, boarding schools and youth homeless shelters. Through the Community Care Licensing Division’s searchable database, the public can see every time a facility was inspected by licensing officials or was the subject of a complaint, and identify any state sanctions.
The public database was created by a 2014 bill similar to Grove’s legislation — calling for transparency measures to increase children’s safety. Lawmakers took up the issue after media coverage of hidden problems at licensed child care facilities. Public outrage grew after reports in 2012 showed that 11-month-old Adam Dash died at a day care center that had multiple prior licensing violations. While state authorities had been familiar with the deficiencies, parents knew nothing.
The law was passed to “give parents a complete picture of what the state knows about child care centers instead of having records remain stored away in obscure government offices with difficult to no access,” an analysis of the 2014 legislation states.
“Adam would still be alive today had his father and I been aware of the history of violations,” Adam’s mother Julie Garcia said at a legislative hearing.
But while the state’s existing database includes incident reports and follow-up stemming from specific complaints. SB 1043, in contrast, would require routine disclosure anytime a child is restrained or secluded.
That added level of transparency is “important and needed,” said Luciana Svidler, director of policy and training at the Children’s Law Center of California, which represents thousands of youth in foster care across the state and is among more than a dozen organizations supporting the bill.
Svidler pointed out that many of the children in residential centers have endured severe trauma, from physical abuse to human trafficking. And in a place where they’re supposed to receive therapeutic services and nurturing support, they too often end up managed by staff who lack the proper training and tools to more safely and effectively soothe children in crisis.
“That’s what SB 1043 is really about — better oversight of group care to stop the inhumane treatment of children, including the unnecessary use of restraints,” she said. “Being restrained, especially in their home and by an adult in a position of power, can be further traumatizing and trigger terrifying memories for children.”
