Oregon is placing foster children in unlicensed short-term rentals

Published 9:18 pm Monday, November 20, 2023

Oregon child welfare officials have spent years struggling to find appropriate places to house the state’s most vulnerable children.

Now, after scandals involving their use of hotel rooms and out-of-state private facilities, state officials have landed on a new — but still trouble-ridden — approach: They are paying a religious nonprofit more than 100 times the amount they pay foster care parents to watch children in unregulated short-term rental homes.

It’s the latest iteration of a desperate child welfare system continually plagued by problems, lawsuits and criticism. The practice has gone unpublicized, but inquiries into the new arrangement by Oregon Public Broadcasting and attorneys representing children in foster care have spurred the state to examine it more closely.

Founded by former pastor

The nonprofit, Dynamic Life Inc., was founded by a former pastor based in Keizer. Fueled by taxpayer dollars, the nonprofit grew at a shocking rate in the past year.

Nathan Webber, who started Dynamic Life and up until recently was the CEO, said it started with a phone call from a friend. Webber, who has served as a foster parent, said his friend asked him to help a kid placed in state care who was destroying a hotel room.

Webber explained it as an almost biblical tale. He and his sons, Isaiah and Josiah, showed up at the hotel in Lincoln City and told the kid in foster care they loved him. While the kid kicked and screamed and punched, they kept repeating the message: We love you.

“You just stand there and let him know you love him, no matter what,” Webber said. “He kicks you in the shin, you tell him you love him.”

A couple of hours later, the boy, sweating and tired, finally stopped being violent, Webber said.

“From there, the state said, ‘Could you do that again? Could you possibly do that again?’” Webber said. “And we said, ‘Yeah, we think we can do that’ and out of that was created Dynamic Life.”

In October 2022, Oregon child welfare officials signed a contract with Dynamic Life, noting they could be paid up to $2,916 per day, for every child or teenager the state places in their care.

Compare that to the amount the state’s child welfare system pays a foster parent to care for a teenager — which is $795 per month. If a child is determined to have high needs, a foster parent is usually paid slightly more, an additional $240 to $468 per month, still significantly less than what Dynamic Life receives.

In the last 12 months, the state has paid the religious nonprofit more than $7.7 million to provide support services to about 40 kids at risk of temporary lodging and to those already in temporary lodging, such as a hotel or short-term rental.

Perhaps more troublesome than the large dollar figure is the lack of oversight.

Most places where foster children are placed, such as group homes or official child-caring facilities, are state-regulated. Licensed child-caring agencies, for example, must meet a long list of requirements including always providing access to the child in custody to investigators, court-appointed special advocates or attorneys. Employees of such facilities also need to meet certain requirements and training, such as knowing how to restrain a child without hurting them, for example.

State Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, a Democrat from Corvallis who has written many of the state laws to protect children, acknowledged Oregon’s struggles to find homes for foster children. But, she said, there are important reasons for regulations, including greater transparency and oversight.

“We would never say, ‘We don’t have enough physicians so we’re going to waive requirements so we could get more,’” Gelser Blouin said. “People want to know their brain surgeon passed the boards and doesn’t have complaints against them and has an active license. We should do the same for the vulnerable kids we are placing in care.”

“Providers who can’t comply with state licensing rules are not qualified to be providers,” Gelser Blouin said. “The use of unlicensed and uncertified services for kids in care is a tragedy waiting to happen.”

Child welfare officials said Dynamic Life is providing services that would not require them to be licensed as a child-caring agency.

Last week, Oregon child welfare officials said they were unsure whether 31 current and former Dynamic Life staff had been appropriately background checked. State officials completed an audit and said later that the staff all qualified to work with children placed in state care.

But Gelser Blouin noted state child welfare officials weren’t aware of a possible issue until advocates started asking questions.

“It is only because these advocates persisted that ODHS (Oregon Department of Human Services) discovered dozens of Dynamic Life staff had access to kids without having completed the comprehensive background check process required by state and federal law and ODHS’s own rules,” Gelser Blouin said.

‘Raising the standard’

Dynamic Life’s president, Ned Clements, who started in March, said the nonprofit has a two-week training that is “raising the standard — and is above” what other providers across the state are doing. They include training on ethics, trauma-informed care, how to interact with case workers and family and cultural competency, among a long list of other items, such as first aid and CPR, Clements wrote in an email.

But advocates for kids placed in foster care remain worried about the latest attempt to find kids a safe place to live.

“If you have a child who is a legal ward of the state of Oregon and they are placing their own ward — who they have a duty to protect — in a group home that is unlicensed and unregulated. I don’t know how that can be OK?” said Jenna App, the state director of Court Appointed Special Advocates, an organization that trains volunteers to look out for kids in foster care. “Can you imagine putting your own child in a home like that?”

Webber is an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and a man of God, according to his Instagram account, @ontheflynatedog. He’s a fan of Pat Robertson, the late religious television personality and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News primetime host.

He’s been involved with the state for more than a decade, initially working with the Office of Developmental Disabilities Services starting in 2013.

In 2022, he and the company he founded, Dynamic Life, struck a lucrative deal with the state’s child welfare department.

Dynamic Life provides two staff members on duty for each home, who according to a job posting, need to be 18 years old and pass a background check to get hired. They earn about $16.50 an hour and are expected to work 12-hour shifts. One of the application questions asks, “Are you willing to work at least 72 consecutive hours a week?”

Clements, the company’s new president, said the company’s contract is justified.

“Our staff are willing and trained to do this type of work but not without being compensated fairly as they often work 24 hours a day,” Clements wrote in an email. “This can result in significant overtime. The premise of our plan is to place staff with the individual for longer-term so that consistency is developed, and the young person feels safe and valued.”