Article About Rhode Island's Children Shelters

Carole Shauffer is quoted in an article about Rhode Island’s children shelters. Here is the quote: “The length of the stay worries Carole B. Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, which has sued California for overusing shelters for children age 6 and under.

No matter how well run a shelter is, Schauffer said, studies show that residential care facilities with multiple caregivers working in shifts cannot provide for the emotional needs of children, especially those under age of 6. Those children, she said, need one or two people whom they can attach to who will care for them regularly. That’s not possible, she said, when their caregivers change every eight hours.

“They [caregivers] can be good people. They can be doing the best job they possibly can,” Shauffer said. “But they’re dealing with a model that doesn’t work because that’s not how babies were born to be raised.””

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