Parents, clinicians and judges urge City to shore up Edgewood as supervisors probe residential care

Supervisor Matt Maxwell and colleagues convened a lengthy hearing on placement and residential treatment for high‑need children, where dozens of officials, parents and providers described a system under strain and an immediate funding shortfall at Edgewood Center for Children and Families.

Edgewood’s chief executive Nancy Rubin told the committee the campus provides specialized, hospital‑level care for the city’s most severely ill children and that the agency has run a roughly $2.5 million annual operating deficit in its residential program. She said Edgewood has drawn down about $11 million from private reserves in recent years and warned the residential program would likely be forced to curtail San Francisco placements unless the city resolves a funding gap.

Human Services Agency Director Trent Rohr outlined the child‑welfare context: fewer children are entering foster care overall, but a small cohort requires intensive, 24‑hour residential treatment (so‑called Level 14 placements). Rohr said the city currently places a minority of those children locally and that Edgewood receives multiple revenue streams (state board‑and‑care, mental‑health dollars, county general‑fund augmentations). He described HSA’s strategy — risk assessment standardization, team decision‑making, family finding and expansion of wraparound and therapeutic foster‑care slots — but said meaningful system change requires bridge funding while alternatives scale up.

Judge Catherine Feinstein, the juvenile court judge who has handled many of the highest‑need cases, and public defenders and probation officials warned that moving children long distances or cutting local capacity harms family contact and rehabilitation prospects. Clinicians and Edgewood staff described acute cases — frequent suicide attempts, violent assaults on self and others — that they said require intensive residential medical and psychiatric care not replicable in conventional foster settings. Multiple parents who said their children stabilized at Edgewood urged emergency action to avoid displacing already vulnerable children out of county.

The committee did not adopt a final funding decision in the hearing; supervisors and staff instead agreed to continue the item to the call of the chair. President Peskin and several supervisors asked the mayor's office, HSA and the PUC to return with options for short‑term bridge funding and an expedited interagency working group that would map funding, placement and step‑down options. Committee members stressed they wanted clear, short timelines for a plan to prevent any closure or abrupt discharges.

What happens next: The committee continued deliberations and asked city departments to provide written options including: (1) short‑term bridge funding to keep Edgewood placements for San Francisco children locally available while alternatives scale up, (2) a time‑bound work plan to expand wraparound and therapeutic foster homes, and (3) an interagency task force with HSA, DPH, Juvenile Probation, the Public Defender and community providers to track placements, outcomes and costs.

Sources: Hearing testimony from Trent Rohr (Director, Human Services Agency), Nancy Rubin (CEO, Edgewood Center), Judge Catherine Feinstein, Edgewood clinicians, parents and public comment.