BOISE — This summer, a girl entered Idaho’s foster system who needed treatment. She bounced around from the state’s new foster facility in Payette, to a hospital, to a psychiatric hospital, and back and forth for three weeks before the state found her an appropriate care setting out of state.
In the past, the girl may have stayed in a short-term rental, such as an Airbnb, until something opened up, but the state is now moving away from this practice largely because of a law passed this session by the Legislature.
“She needed some very special one-on-one care,” Youth Safety and Permanency Administrator Jean Fisher said. “… We want to close up these Airbnbs, the temporary housing, so it took all the resources we had and we finally got her placed, and she’s in a good place now.”
Fisher heads a new position overseeing the state’s child welfare system that was created after the new director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare reorganized the department’s leadership.
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