The Auburn Residential Center is caught in a struggle between the state Public Employees Federation's attempt to save jobs and the state's push to close and downsize residential centers statewide.

In January, the center, a non-secure facility for girls from 13 to 17 years old, located on Pine Ridge Road, learned that it was scheduled to close on Jan. 11, 2009, along with five other such facilities.

The 24-bed facility employs a staff of 25 but only serves two children. None of its residents come from Cayuga County.

Edward Borges, director of communications for the state Office of Children and Family Services, said that the Public Employees Federation made “unambiguously false” statements in an advertisement published in The Citizen March 2.

The ad said, “The State is being shortsighted in its rush to close these facilities.” Borges countered by saying, “OCFS has provided the unions with 12 months' notice before shuttering these facilities so that we can take the time to help our employees identify and secure jobs in other facilities - that can hardly be described as a ‘rush to close these facilities.'”

The cyclical nature of the need to place juveniles in non-secure facilities was mentioned in the ad. The Auburn Residential Center averaged somewhere between 17 and 21 residents at the facility for years where figures were available, while in 2007 the numbers decreased significantly.

Borges said that the average stay of each child is 18 months, sometimes half as much.

“The likelihood is that no one is being released as a result of these closings,” he said. A child still assigned to a facility when it closed would be transferred to a comparable institution.

Darcy Wells, public relations officer for the Public Employees Federation, said, “We feel that the OCFS targeted certain facilities to close. What better argument would there be than there were too few students? It is a deliberate attempt to empty out this facility because they're (children and family services) the ones that place them there in the first place. They have the ability to make it so that there are only two kids there.”

“Back in August there were 15 to 20 kids. You need to compare how many kids are being placed in other facilities who could have been placed there,” she said. “You look back with hindsight and ask, 'Where are the replacements?”

“I know this happens,” she said. “Our members told us that they are concerned about speaking and sticking their necks out. Speaking on the record is hard to do.”

People at the Auburn Residential Center were offered jobs in Manhattan and Long Island, she said, for the same pay that they get here.

“There's a conflict if you have family and are living in one community and have to have your family uprooted to move to a different part of the state,” Wells said. “It's not as simple as it sounds.”

“The Auburn members were being trained in a therapy based program designed to meet the needs of the children when they were informed that the facility would close,” Wells said. She said it was a shame that just when they were glad to get the training they were pulled out.

“I know from meeting members who work in these facilities,” Wells said. “It takes a special person to go into this area. They're dedicated to the new programs and should go ahead. They were excited about this new program. They were into it.”

Borges, however, said, “We're moving them (juvenile offenders) into a community based alternative to incarceration. Their needs are not being addressed in non-secure facilities.” He added that they would be receiving intensive functional family therapy under the new system.

He referred to a New York Times article, “A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders,” written by Leslie Kaufman, in February 2008, which follows a 15-year-old offender who bounced between a juvenile detention center in the Bronx and an upstate residential center. He was later placed in the Juvenile Justice Initiative program, which sent him back to his family and provided intensive therapy.

The child began to correct his behavior and stayed in school. He is expected to be off probation by July if he continues to improve.

According to Kaufman's article, there has been significant success among the juveniles enrolled as well as cost savings from the reduced use of residential treatment centers.

Borges also countered the advertisement's assertion that “the demand to open beds for returned youths forces the discharge of youths before they are ready to go back to their communities.”

In an e-mail to the Citizen, he said, “OCFS is not discharging youths before their terms are finished to open beds for others. Residential facilities are operating at 40 percent or more below capacity, some even sit empty. Even with these announced closings, OCFS will have more than enough beds to house troubled children in the event of increased youth crime.”

“With the Juvenile Justice Initiative, the repeated or habitual relapse rate dropped to 30 percent,” he said. “Instead of paying $140,000 to $200,000 annually for each child, it costs about $17,000 to return him to his family.”

Borges said the $16 million being spent on empty beds would be reapplied to community-based alternatives to incarceration.

Staff writer Kathleen Barran can be reached at 253-5311 ext 238 or kathleen.barran@lee.net