22 January 2024
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – After shutting down for a year due to staffing shortages and reopening last spring, Sedgwick County’s Juvenile Residential facility is now looking to expand.
The facility is an alternative to a traditional juvenile detention facility. It’s lower security and allows for more involvement in outside activities.
The facility closed for more than a year because of staffing difficulties post-COVID.
Now, the county has raised wages for staff and is working on building a new home for the facility.
“You’re valuable to us, you’re important to us, you are our future,” said Larry Burks II, Evening Reporting Center Program Manager at the Juvenile Residential Facility.
Burks is glad Sedgwick County’s Juvenile Residential Facility is back up and running.
It’s a place for people between the ages of 12 and 20 to serve time in a community setting instead of in a correctional facility.
They take classes on life skills like decision making and anger management.
“They’re getting the services they need without being separated from their families and their support networks,” Burks said.
The facility’s services were paused from April 2022 to May 2023 because of a staffing shortage.
Now, wages have gone up from starting pay of about $17.82 an hour the month the facility closed, to $20.89 an hour now.
The facility has slowly been expanding capacity since it reopened in May. It can hold 11 kids now, and is planned to open fully in the coming months to hold 16.
In the long term, the goal is to build a new facility.
“Replace the juvenile residential facility with a new building to house the Juvenile Residential Facility, juvenile field services, evening reporting center and home based services all in one new building here on the same campus,” said Steven Stonehouse, Sedgwick County Department of Corrections Director.
The new building would hold 24 beds.
The new building for the juvenile residential facility will likely be finished in the next two to three years.
The current building will eventually be knocked town to make way for the new one, which will be built in the same spot.