Hayward sues Alameda County over foster care mismanagement
HAYWARD - The city of Hayward filed a lawsuit Thursday against Alameda County over alleged "willful mismanagement" of a transitional center for foster youth where the city says children frequently go missing, are exposed to or coerced into drug use, assaults and other forms of violence, sex trafficking and prostitution.
Formally called the Alameda County Assessment Center, the site is operated by the Alameda County Social Services Agency and managed day-to-day by the nonprofit WestCoast Children's Clinic. It is supposed to be a safe place for foster youth -- from birth to 21 years old -- to temporarily stay until they are placed in a new home.
The lawsuit, which comes after the city's multiple attempts to get the county to intervene at the transitional center, asks the county to cease operations of the center "until procedures and policies can be put in place" to protect the health and safety of foster youth.
The Alameda County Sheriff's Office withdrew its onsite security from the center in mid-February and was subsequently replaced by a private security company, Diligence Security Group. At the same time, the Hayward Police Department took over the responsibility of answering service calls at the center.
Since then, calls to Hayward police and firefighter-paramedics "skyrocketed," resulting in over 750 police hours spent on center-related calls and incidents.
"The city has deployed officers from the Hayward Police Station on hundreds of occasions since mid-February to investigate complaints of missing children, drug overdoses, assaults, human trafficking, and sexual exploits of children within the Center and the adjacent neighborhood," wrote Hayward City Attorney Michael Lawson in a June 14 letter to Alameda County.
Lawson wrote in the letter that "the onus should not be on the City of Hayward to devote so many of its limited public safety resources to a single county facility."
The Alameda County counsel's office was not immediately available for comment on the lawsuit.
