It took four days for the Department of Human Services to violate its newest directive prohibiting foster children from staying in unlicensed facilities overnight, highlighting the embattled agency’s challenges.

Last Wednesday, Oct. 22, Human Services Secretary Rafael López issued a policy directing social services providers to “immediately stop facilitating stays in unlicensed settings.”

“Hotels, motels, office buildings, and other unlicensed settings are not in a youth’s best interest and must be discontinued immediately,” López’s memo announcing the policy change reads.

That did not stop a youth from spending Sunday night in the Baltimore City Department of Social Services office, according to attorney Mitchell Y. Mirviss.

“Clearly the agencies are not at the point where the problem has been solved,” said Mirviss, who has been suing the human services department over its treatment of foster youths in out-of-home care for almost four decades.

It’s unclear what circumstances led to the state having to keep the child in an office overnight; privacy laws for children in state custody are strict and officials are quick to cite them.

“We do not discuss individual youth cases as their confidentiality is protected by law,” human services spokesperson Lilly Price said. “We urge the attorney in question to follow federal and state privacy laws.”

There is a litany of reasons why a caseworker may have a hard time immediately placing a child in a home or facility — it could be the middle of the night, the child could have run away, or they could have special needs that make them hard to place — but the new policy leaves little wiggle room.

López’s memo said social services departments are “prohibited” from putting children in state care in unlicensed settings. Advocates and former social services workers said the new policy is prescriptive without offering alternatives. Placements in hotels or office buildings are often viewed as a last resort.

“I probably shouldn’t say this to a reporter, but I think it’s insane. It’s not a solution,” Judith Schagrin, a former assistant director of the Baltimore County Department of Social Services, said. “There’s got to be a metaphor for it, where somebody tells somebody to stop doing something but doesn’t give them something else to do instead. They wouldn’t be doing it if they had any other choice.”

The Department of Human Services and the Baltimore City Department of Social Services, which is under López’s purview, has for decades been under a consent decree dictating how to treat children in foster care.

While the consent decree already banned the state from housing children in office buildings, the practice had occurred with some regularity. A report from a court-appointed monitor showed dozens of children spent at least one night either in an office or a hotel in the second half of 2024.

At one point, Mirviss said, a federal judge required the state to fund beds in foster homes even if there weren’t children to fill them. Those beds could be used in emergency situations, like when someone came into the state’s care outside of business hours.

That provision was done away with more than a year ago, when attorneys for the human services department argued those beds weren’t needed and that they were a waste of state money, Mirviss said.

“They are on record officially and formally saying we have foster homes for when children come into care,” he said.

The unlicensed facilities policy was issued exactly a month after a 16-year-old girl in the state’s care died by suicide while living in an East Baltimore hotel. Lawmakers are holding a hearing Wednesday where López and other human services officials are expected to face difficult questions about their handling of the foster care system.

Gov. Wes Moore, who has stood by López, said earlier this month that he expects “firm accountability” from the human services department.

Shanta Trivedi, faculty director at the University of Baltimore’s Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts, said the problems with foster care are too entrenched to be solved by a policy or leadership change, and that more focus should be placed on why children enter the system to begin with.

“We have to be more holistic in our approach because poverty is at the root of so many of the problems that we’re trying to solve,” Trivedi said.

López’s administration had reduced the number of foster children living in hotels to six, as of Monday, from 41 when he was appointed to his post in 2023 (That figure has fluctuated through the years). But advocates worry that kids are being put in other undesirable settings.

There have been increasing calls for the state to avoid putting children in homeless shelters. Since the beginning of 2023, at least 53 youths have spent at least one night in a shelter, according to figures from the department.

Schagrin, the former Baltimore County social services official, said she’s “pretty tuned into” these issues and had no idea the state was using homeless shelters.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

While those shelters are usually solely for youths, it is difficult to say with certainty if that is always the case. The human services department declined to share a list of shelters it has placed foster children in, citing privacy laws.