Finding Family: When group home residents and staffers become more

Brian* hurries to the back porch where Kelli Connell is sitting and exclaims, “I found the remote that was missing for about a month!” 

“You found it! Where was it?” responds Connell, wearing a cross necklace and leaning back in her porch chair. 

“All the way under the couch, all the way behind, in the corner,” says Brian, wearing a T-shirt that declares, “That’s a terrible idea. What time?” 

“I’m glad we got it,” she says.  

It’s a typical interaction that would take place between family members, but these two aren’t child and parent. He’s a teen in the foster care system, and she’s the program manager of this Ravenna Township licensed and accredited group home — the only in Portage County for foster youth.  

Kellijo Jeffries, director of Portage County Job & Family Services, worked with county commissioners to launch the group home in a leased house.  

“I recognized a vast need for services for teenagers,” she says. “They don’t oftentimes feel a sense of family in the system. … You have the everyday challenges that teenagers face. Then add to that trauma.”  

Only one Portage JFS-licensed foster home out of 35 takes teens, according to Portage JFS. So teens in Portage JFS’ custody have been placed in less familiar settings, like foster homes out of the county or state, or institutional residential treatment facilities. That takes them away from their schools and families, so education, visits and just being a teenager have been tougher.  

But since the group home started in December 2019, it has given adolescents back some of the normalcy they crave. It provides foster youth a homier setting to attend the same school and visit family. It serves as a comfortable transitional spot where they stay a month to a year-plus while they wait for an opening in an adoptive or foster home, work toward reuniting with family or emancipate out of the system at age 18. 

Since its start, 27 youth have lived at the group home, including 15 this year, according to Portage JFS. That’s only a small portion of the adolescents who need help. As of mid-November, there are 210 kids in Portage JFS’ custody, and 63 are adolescents over 12 years old.

Most local foster and adoptive parents are seeking children and babies, so Portage JFS is urgently recruiting foster and adoptive homes to take teens. Sometimes, hesitancy can be caused by the stigma that foster teens are “bad kids,” Connell says, but she doesn’t see them that way.   

“When you hear, That’s a foster kid, you need to think, That’s a kid that needs more from you,” she says. “They are honestly just kids looking for love, wanting to be supported and understood.”  

As efforts to find placements continue, the new group home puts teens in the system in a setting with more of the stability they need as they come of age until they are 18. 

“If they’re not able to reunify with family, and we’re not able to secure adoption,” says Jeffries, “then we will raise these kiddos.” 

Just in time for the holidays in 2019, five kids moved into the group home. They woke up on Christmas morning and opened gifts under the tree. Staffers took photos like proud parents. 

Jeffries’ team emailed other Portage JFS workers asking for holiday decorations, and staffers delivered more than a sleigh’s share, in addition to presents from a community giving program. 

“It makes a challenging time … really special,” Jeffries says. “We tried hard to give that whole Christmas experience from a family perspective.” 

The house is arranged like a family home. Pumpkins from a backyard community garden cozy up the front porch and a basketball hoop frames the gravel driveway. You enter through a screened-in back porch, with fishing poles by the door that kids take to West Branch State Park and a paint-splattered tablecloth from craft time.

The family room has a cushy sectional accented by a “Be Kind” pillow and an Xbox and PlayStation by the TV. A study has computers for homework. A container of homemade cupcakes rests on the kitchen table, while a tacked-up meal plan announces cheeseburger casserole for Saturday dinner. 

But there are also reminders of how it’s different. It has to follow extensive accreditation criteria to be a qualified residential treatment facility under the federal Family First Prevention Services Act that took effect in October. One of five licensed social workers, including Connell and Sonia Emerson, trained in trauma-informed care must always be on-site.

Following an initial health assessment, a clinical manager connects youth with 24/7 treatment for mental health, substance abuse and trauma-related behavioral issues during their stay and up to six months after. Security cameras monitor the study and porch, parental controls limit internet access and when kids come home, they’re searched for drugs or anything that would inhibit their recoveries.  

After school, they follow a busy schedule: volunteering or going to the Kent State rec center on Mondays, doing a fun activity or attending off-site counseling on Tuesdays, taking part in anger management or substance abuse house groups on Wednesdays, participating in a general house group on Thursdays and partaking in social outings on weekends.

They might also go to jobs and extracurriculars, and all foster youth 14 and older join an independent living program to learn practical skills.  

The group home began as coed, but staffers found it’s better to have one sex, so it’s now male only. Currently, an 11-year-old, two 14 year-olds and a 17-year-old are filling four of seven spots that can stay open depending on staffing and the service needs of the kids, who are often sent there to have more behavioral guidance and support.

Graduating is the main priority for residents, stresses Connell, who became program manager in October 2020. At 17 years old, Justin*, who lived at the group home from April to July 2021, arrived nearly failing out of school. He loved his laid-back foster home but needed more structure.  

Connell and other staffers ensured he did his homework before anything else. Within days, he saw a turnaround in his grades.  

“Every time I got home, she helped me with my homework and online classes,” Justin says.  

Staffers assist all residents and attend school IEP meetings to strategize how to bridge gaps. A current teen resident could barely read when he arrived, so Connell quizzes him on phonics flashcards at the kitchen table. She proudly reports that he’s whizzing through stacks. 

“Once they’re getting the services they need, it is amazing to watch them excel,” she says. “Foster kids usually have educational neglect.” She adds that can be because of skipping school, a lack of parental help, an undiagnosed learning disorder or switching schools often. 

Workers also help kids build social skills, as they can struggle with interrupting, littering, following rules and more. “They’re not taught a lot of these things,” Connell says. 

To help work on these issues, there’s a token system where kids have an individualized list of daily tasks, such as not swearing, cleaning their rooms and showering. If they check off all of their tasks, they can get a token to shop the home’s community closet for snacks, room decor and more. Connell loves seeing lists transition from X’s for missed tasks to checkmarks and when they initiate their own positive behaviors. 

“The younger kids coming in, one of my 14-year-olds took a leadership role,” she says, “in showing them how to do things, hook up the computer.” 

The residents often relate to each other and sometimes are already friends. Luther* lived there from August to December 2020. He had been in the Juvenile Detention Center with his roommate, who has been a friend since fifth grade. Luther also bonded with Connell and remembers when she baked him an 18th birthday cake and had everyone sing. 

“She was the best, man. I love Kelli,” he says. “She can relate with everything.” 

Connell grew up in a trailer park in a low-income family without a father figure. 

“There were some things we definitely had to go through as a result of his substance abuse. That really drives me to help those kids, because a lot of them have been affected by substance abuse,” she says. “Coming from facing hard times is what makes me a good social worker.” 

When Luther was released from the detention center, he chose the foster system over returning home. 

“I came from a broken family,” he says.  

“I couldn’t go back.” 

He lived with his dad, stepmom and siblings in the Aurora area and says they were “dirt poor.” His dad had custody of him since he was about 6 because his biological mom’s boyfriend abused him.  

“Every day in high school, I hated coming home. It’s just toxic,” Luther says. He struggled with substance abuse, got sentenced to the detention center at 15 and has been in and out or on probation since. His dad was strict, they fought and he withdrew. 

“He locked me down. We bumped heads. He beat the shit out of me a few times,” Luther says. “That’s why I stayed in my room. If they left, I came out.” 

Often, kids end up in the system because they don’t have a safe place to go. Connell has encountered kids who have experienced and witnessed domestic violence, physical abuse, neglect, substance abuse and sexual abuse — all of that can contribute to behavioral and mental health issues. 

“Some kids come from situations where they were doing drugs with their parents,” Connell adds. “Or where they’re able to cook and do all these things because they … were the parent.” 

When he was just a sixth-grader, Justin began smoking with his parents, he says. Sometimes the electricity would get shut off at his mom’s house when she didn’t pay bills. He and his older sister would huddle under a blanket to stay warm. The siblings wanted to live with their dad — but it only lasted one weekend. 

“He was always hitting us,” Justin recalls. They briefly stayed with their mom, but she lost custody due to substance abuse. A JFS worker took the then-13 and 14-year-olds to a Windham foster home, which is the only Portage JFS-licensed one that takes teens.  

“We still have a significant substance abuse problem in Portage County,” Jeffries says. “We have situations where reunification is challenged by substance abuse and mental health.” 

The number of children in Portage JFS’ custody has substantially increased, from 148 in 2014 to about 210 now, and Jeffries attributes part of the rise to the opioid, heroin and fentanyl epidemics. The agency received 3,160 calls of abuse, neglect and families in need of services in 2020, but that may be underreported due to the pandemic.

As of mid-November, 81 kids are in family foster homes, 76 in kinship care, 31 in therapeutic foster homes, 10 in residential treatment facilities, five in private group homes, four in the JFS group home, two in adoptive care and one in the detention center, according to Portage JFS.  

The Family First act emphasizes placing youth with screened kin, which could be neighbors, coaches, church members or others when biological family members aren’t available.

Under Family First, kin can now get funding, have a caseworker, get youth and themselves access to reimbursed evidence-based preventive family mental health services, substance abuse treatment and in-home parenting training and get licensed as foster parents. But kin must pass background checks for criminal history or Children Services complaints, and Connell says sometimes a dozen kin can’t pass.  

Kids become permanent custody of the foster system when reunification with biological family members isn’t possible. While Portage JFS workers search for kin, foster parents or adoption, these youth can get alternative placements. Brian is in permanent custody and had been in an institutional residential treatment facility.

There, kids often attend on-site schools, follow a restrictive schedule and have limited privacy and freedoms to prevent them from harming themselves or others. Brian has struggled with mental health. He is also gay, and at the facility, he hid his sexuality because kids bullied him. It was a tough experience, but he got reassigned to the group home, where he became close with Connell. 

“I love this kid,” she says. “Half the stuff that he’s done has been a coping mechanism so people would not be mean to him — just to deal with the trauma.” 

When Connell got married, she was out for nine days. Missing Connell, Brian struggled. Connell gets emotional as she describes their deep attachment — he’s been at the group home since January, the longest stay of anyone. 

“Getting him into a loving foster home — as hard as it’s going to be for me to let go — it’s really important because he deserves a family,” she says. “They all deserve family. It’s so heartbreaking.” 

As they age and experience trauma, the more challenging it can be for youth to get adopted or fostered. Adoptive and foster parents can check characteristics they want and don’t want, including age, race, gender, sexuality and mental health history.  

The group home has finally given Brian freedom to be himself. He attends an LGBTQ support group, loves to wear pink and paints Connell’s nails. 

Foster kids can miss out on common experiences, so staffers expose them to simple joys. They went to Edgewater beach, and some kids were stunned as they’ve never seen Lake Erie — or even knew it existed. For Halloween, one 6-foot-5 16-year-old who had been in residential facilities for five years requested to go trick-or-treating. During Easter, some teens did an egg hunt. 

“Watching them run out the door as fast as they can, acting like children — those are the best moments,” Connell says. “Because most of these kids haven’t had a childhood.” 

Justin experienced several firsts while living at his foster home. During his first Christmas there, he couldn’t believe how much his foster parents spent on food, presents and decorations, and how many other family members joined in. “It was a nice change,” he says. Holidays as a kid meant sitting at home while his parents drank. Seemingly typical activities at the foster home were also novel — it was the first time he ever sat at a table for a family dinner, went on a school clothes shopping spree and went on vacation. 

“I got spoiled,” Justin admits. He cut three months of school his senior year and ran away to visit his mom and sister. Quickly, he fell into old patterns. His mom didn’t get him clothes, so he washed the clothes off his back and wore them daily.  

“We got in the car, my mom lit a joint, and we immediately started smoking,” he says. “Every day, we smoked.”  

He was reported as a runaway, and police eventually arrested him and his mom for harboring a runaway. He went back to the foster home and got transferred to the group home because he was skipping school. 

While he found homework guidance and house meetings that taught life skills helpful at the group home, he didn’t always find the structured outings and the anger management groups fruitful.  

“When you’re forced to do something, you don’t want to,” he says. “I don’t like opening up.”  

Luther didn’t like being pushed to talk about certain topics during groups at the group home either. While he was close to Connell, he didn’t get along with some other staffers or like being constantly monitored, especially since he came from a relaxed Canton foster home after getting released from the detention center.  

“They were always on strict lockdown,” he says. “Some of the kids have already been to jail. Some of their parents wouldn’t let them venture out on their own. So they already feel locked up, and that’s why they’re acting out.” 

Reactions to the group home can depend on the setting a kid came from. 

“A foster home is much more like a home, so they don’t have any sort of structure that we have,” Connell says. “Those kids probably don’t enjoy the group home as much as the kids that come from the more restrictive [facilities].” 

While kids can push back, staff are trained to understand that these behaviors can be repercussions of trauma and help them cope. 

“Oftentimes kids in foster care feel like throwaways,” Jeffries says. “Just because you make a mistake, doesn’t mean you’re gonna lose our love and support. … We’re going to redirect you.” 

To make the group home a safe environment that won’t trigger issues, there are house rules: no profanity, no fighting, no going into others’ rooms, no drugs and putting cell phones away during activities and providing staff their passwords. Following the rules earns privileges like unsupervised social visits.  

Ultimately, being in a more structured environment helped Justin get into the Army. 

“Honestly I don’t think I would have graduated if it wasn’t for people at the group home,” he says.  

Before he left for basic training, he gave his foster mom, Jan*, and Connell stickers that say “Proud Parent of a U.S. Soldier.”  

“I see them as a parent figure,” he says.  

His favorite group home memory was when Connell took residents on a family outing to West Branch, and it felt like they were a part of her family. 

“When I left [the group home], Connell … started crying,” he recalls. “It made me tear up a little. I gave her a big hug. I love her.” 

Last winter, Connell helped Luther move into an apartment. At 18, he was left to finish his senior year on his own. 

She helped haul in clothes, a TV, dishes and food from the group home, and that was it. There wasn’t any fanfare, just a reminder that after being each other’s family for months, they were going their separate ways. 

“We move these kids in, and it’s almost heartbreaking to be like, Talk to you later,” Connell says. “You don’t just stop needing parents the day you turned 18.” 

Luther got his apartment through the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ Bridges program for teens who emancipate out of foster care. Until adolescents are 21, Bridges provides a stipend for rent and utilities to participants who are employed, in a jobs program or in school. While they meet with a group every 90 days and have a liaison, people can still get lost. 

“We teach independent living skills, but unfortunately, when they’re 18, a lot of them don’t have a lot of people to help them,” Connell says. “So many kids end up … in prison, on drugs, in horrible situations.” 

Luther couldn’t wait to live on his own, but finishing his senior year remotely was challenging. With the help of an alarm clock Connell got him and regular calls from her, he graduated. It only took one party for him to get kicked out of his apartment and lose everything. Eventually, Connell got him into another Bridges apartment, and now he is working at Dollar Tree. 

“I still stay connected with them and try to help them,” she says. “The kids do have to play a big role.”  

JFS staffers understand that the system can only do so much, so they are strengthening what they can do. Family First offers more transitional services for youth after they leave the system, including counseling connections, transportation to medical and social service appointments, and case management and jobs services connections.

In March, an influx of nearly $2 million from a passed Portage County Child Welfare Levy will bring more staff and services to Portage JFS. Jeffries hopes to work with commissioners to explore creating more residential options for female youth. County adoptions have averaged five to 10 per year, but remain mostly younger kids, so the search for teen foster and adoptive parents continues.  

Connell is up to the task. She has been so affected by the group home that she’s getting licensed to be a foster parent. She and her husband can’t take Portage JFS kids she works with, but their hearts are set on taking Portage County teens through an agency partner. 

“We have a lot of love to give,” she says. “We want to give them a good life.” 

She wants to be the parent they’ve never had because she knows, for some, the system is the closest they get to home. 

Despite the challenges, Luther would still choose foster care.  

“I’d rather be there than at my dad’s or in jail again,” he says. He doesn’t talk to his family except for weekly calls with his biological mom, who is in jail, but has found an advocate in Connell. “I view her as family,” he says. 

She has shown him that he can be more than his past. 

“I’m always like, I came from the trailer park. …  I got it together. I went to school, I got bachelor’s and master’s degrees,” Connell says. “It’s doable.” 

Luther has experienced setbacks, but he is working toward buying a car to have the freedom he’s always wanted and dreams of entering the Marine Corps or learning a trade. To help kids in the foster system get past labels and envision a future for themselves, Luther would like more understanding.  

“They’re broken. … That person could have come from divorce, abusive family, getting robbed, their friends betray them,” he says. “You’ve got to learn their story as a person before you judge them.” 

People doubted him, but Justin is happy to report he not only completed Army basic training but has an assignment to go to South Korea in April as a patriot fire operator maintainer. In three years, he’s planning to pick Japan as his station, where he’s dreamt of living since he was in eighth grade.  

What drove him through basic was his family.  

“I really just wanted to go home for Christmas,” he says.  

By home he means his foster home, to visit with his former foster siblings and parents — they are his family now.  

“Some kids come into the system really bad,” he says. “They start getting better if you give them love and show them that someone cares.” 

He’s successful because people in the system showed him that he’s worth it — and that love spurred him to put in the effort to change his future. 

“It was just people like [Jan] and Kelli,” he says. “They didn’t give up on me.” 

*Names have been changed to protect identities. 

Help Out 

Be a Foster Parent: Get licensed by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services by completing 36 hours of pre-service training, adult and pediatric CPR certification, an application, a home study, a background check and other requirements. Call 330-389-7510 to learn more.  

Group Home: Give gift cards for dining and other youth activities.  

Emancipated Foster Youth: Donate hygiene products, cleaning supplies or other household goods.  

Get more info by contacting public information officer Sarah Taylor at 330-357-7190 or sarah.taylor2@jfs.ohio.gov.