18 test positive for COVID-19 at His House, Florida’s largest foster group home
Eleven children and seven staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 in Florida’s largest group home for foster children, the facility’s executive director confirmed to the Miami Herald.
His House Children’s Home, a private, nonprofit, faith-based organization based near Miami Gardens, has had a slow but steady increase in reported cases over the past several weeks, after one child first exhibited a 99-degree fever on June 1. The home’s executive director, Silvia Smith-Torres, told the Herald on Wednesday a second child had a 101-degree fever two days later, which prompted staff to take them both to the emergency room.
They both tested positive for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. A total of 47 children of the 49 children at His House have been tested so far, according to Esther Jacobo, director of the Citrus Family Care Network, the state-contracted agency that oversees child welfare services in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.
Children are only tested if they are exposed to a person who has tested positive for the coronavirus, or if they become symptomatic or are taken to the hospital, Jacobo said. Children at His House have been tested at least twice and there are no plans to retest at this point, she added.
Smith-Torres said all children are currently asymptomatic, including the children who had a fever, and are being isolated in two separate “COVID homes,” one for boys and one for girls, that the center designated ahead of a potential outbreak at the 16-home campus. She said there are 49 children living at the group home, which is drastically lower than the 232 children who live there when the home is at full capacity.
Of the 360 employees at His House, Smith-Torres said none of the seven who have tested positive have been hospitalized. They are quarantined in their homes.
The Department of Children and Families, which oversees state-licensed foster homes across Florida, said later Thursday two children in a Central Florida foster home had tested positive for COVID-19.
The His House news, first made public during a call last week with local family welfare advocates, also comes as Florida is seeing a sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, breaking daily records and with a rising death toll that exceeds 3,000.
Dr. Walter Lambert, a pediatrician at the University of Miami who is working with Citrus to develop COVID-19 protocols in South Florida homes, said during last week’s call that he has asked state agencies to prepare additional homes throughout Florida for potential outbreaks.
Evin Daly, a board member of the Miami-Dade Community Based Alliance, said on the June 11 call with community members that he was disturbed by the seven positive cases that were initially reported by His House last week. He said the steady growth was “a great cause of concern in such a densely packed facility.”
“I’m just sort of disturbed that the rate is growing exponentially if you started with two and now you have seven and that’s only a week,” said Daly.
Meanwhile, those who have tested positive at His House were kids who had run away from the main campus. Smith-Torres said they likely became sick with COVID-19 while interacting with relatives outside the group home.
His House serves foster children from throughout the state, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orlando and Tampa. Citrus currently oversees 1,534 children in Miami-Dade County, Jacobo said, including children who live with their foster parents or children living in “high risk” households.
His House also cares for unaccompanied immigrant children under a federal program through the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Elizabeth Anon, the foster home’s general counsel, said last week five migrant children are living at His House. Smith-Torres said none of those children, nor the staff designated to care for them, have tested positive for the virus and they are generally kept separate from the rest of the group home’s population.
His House staff who are interacting with the sick children are wearing full protective gear, including surgical masks, gowns and gloves, Smith-Torres said. None of the 18 who contracted the virus have been hospitalized.
Jacobo said that because Miami-Dade emerged as an early Florida coronavirus hot spot, Citrus has been preparing for months for the likelihood of an outbreak, including setting up living quarters that were isolated.
“We were most concerned about group homes because they congregate, there’s a lot of kids there,” Jacobo said. “The reason this ... is not surprising is because we did identify His House as the place where, if we had outbreaks in the community, with kids who are in foster care, that’s where we were going to put them.”
She added that state agencies, including DCF, have been supportive to Citrus in recent weeks. But in the early days of the pandemic, the welfare agency had to pool resources to offer personal protective equipment to case workers, children and other staff members.
“I think [state agencies] tried really hard, I think, to get us PPE; I don’t think anyone had them at the very beginning. We really had to as a community, we had to really do it kind of ourselves until the state could gather their resources,” Jacobo said.
Smith-Torres said staff and children had sufficient PPE. But she admitted children under their care who might run away continue to be a concern for spread. They’ve identified a “runaway home” to house children once they return to the group home.
In the meantime, staff have also stopped arranging outdoor activities like football games to curb the spread.
“They’re wearing their masks, but it’s a challenge,” Smith-Torres said of the homes’ teens who are finding it challenging to stay inside. “There are different homes, so they play in the yard. They hang out with the children within their homes, so we’ve been able to contain those homes.”
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 5:41 PM.
