12/15/2025
On Monday, December 15, our Temporary Lodging contract with the State of Oregon will be officially cancelled.
I have rewritten that first sentence three times, hoping it would hurt less on the page. It does not.
For the past year and a half, we poured ourselves into building Specialized Supports NW from the ground up with one purpose: to be ready when a displaced child needed a safe place in the midst of a chaotic situation. We built policies and procedures. We pursued licensure. We completed trainings, and compliance requirements. We recruited a team, hired them, and trained them. We created a comprehensive program designed for youth with complex needs, anchored in safety, stability, and trauma informed care. We did not do any of this casually. We did it carefully, and we did it in good faith.
We were ready. We were waiting for a referral. We were standing by for the call that a child needed somewhere safe to go tonight.
That call never came.
Instead, we were told the contract would end before we ever had the chance to serve even the first youth in crisis.
There is a particular kind of grief that comes with building something meant to protect children and then being told it will never be used. Not because you failed. Not because you were unprepared. Not because the need disappeared. Simply because the decision changed.
The cost of that decision is not abstract. It is people.
It is the staff who said yes to difficult work because they believed Oregon’s kids deserve better than temporary fixes. It is the weeks they spent in training, the long shifts they were ready to cover, the lives they were prepared to hold with steady hands.
To everyone who supported us, encouraged us, referred people our way, prayed for us, or simply believed this kind of care should exist, please know we are grateful. We are also proud. Proud of the staff who stepped forward. Proud of the seriousness and compassion they brought to this work. Proud of the program we built, even though it will not have the chance to serve.
Now I want to speak plainly to Oregonians who care about what happens to children in crisis.
The system is broken, and it is breaking kids.
When a deeply troubled child has nowhere appropriate to go, the consequences do not pause while systems debate process. Those children still exist today. They still wake up scared, dysregulated, grieving, angry, and alone. And the most vulnerable and broken of those children are living in hotel rooms with ODHS staff doing their best in an impossible situation, but not trained to deal with the level of behavioural acuity these children have. Many of them are cycling through placements that are not treatment and are not home. These cycles are harming them, and they are getting worse while everyone waits for the next meeting, the next approval, the next plan that will not arrive in time.
If you feel anger reading that, you should. These are not political talking points. These are children.
If you are an Oregonian who wants to see this change, do not look away. Ask hard questions about why capacity is so scarce and why programs that are ready to serve can be shut down before a single child is helped. Ask what the plan is for the youth who are already in crisis right now. Demand timelines, not slogans. Demand real options, not temporary holding patterns. Support the frontline staff and providers who are still trying to do the work, even when the system makes it harder than it needs to be.
Most of all, refuse to accept that this is normal.
Kids in crisis do not need perfection. They need safe, licensed care. They need stability. They need adults who are trained and supported to show up day after day. They need solutions that meet them where they are, not promises that come after the damage is done.
We built our entire agency around that belief. We still believe it. We always will.
Monday is the official end of our contract. It does not have to be the end of the conversation.
