About two years ago, Oregon state child welfare officials reached out to a couple in North Carolina to see if they would take custody of their grandson.
The grandparents, Jerry Joslyn and Elizabeth Spainhaur-Joslyn, didn’t hesitate.
Yes, they said.
For years, the state of Oregon has struggled to find proper placements for kids in foster care. Children have languished in emergency rooms, bounced around from hotels to unlicensed short-term rentals and been in congregate-care facilities for far too long.
A North Carolina couple say they have been unable to bring their 9-year-old grandson into their care.
Courtesy of Elizabeth Spainhauer-Joslyn
And yet this 9-year-old boy, who has a family willing to take him, remains in Oregon months after his grandparents agreed to care for him.
The boy, who OPB is not identifying except by his initials, D.H., has lived in 23 different placements in Oregon since he entered foster care at age 3.
His grandparents, who also care for the boy’s cousins, traveled to Salem to ask lawmakers for help last week. Elizabeth Spainhaur-Joslyn, his grandmother, told lawmakers they have done everything the state of Oregon has asked them to do.
And yet, she testified to members on the Senate Human Services Committee last week, the boy remains in what she described as a “kiddie prison.”
“He has movement alarms on either side of his bed. If his feet kick out from the bed, the alarms go off and he gets a demerit,” Spainhaur-Joslyn said. “He loses free play. He can’t ride bikes. He has to sit in the corner.”
When the grandparents asked why — despite following all of Oregon child welfare officials’ requests, including to get certified as a therapeutic foster home — their grandson was still unable to be with them, they were told it was because of legislation passed in 2020 that prevented kids in Oregon from being sent to out-of-state placements.
And the boy’s caseworker told them it was the fault of one state lawmaker: Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin.
So, the grandparents reached out to Gelser Blouin.
Sen. Gelser Blouin, D-Corvalis at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Ore. on Feb. 2, 2026.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
Gelser Blouin, a Democrat from Corvallis, is the longtime chair of the Senate Human Services Committee. She championed a measure in 2020 to prevent Oregon from sending kids in foster care to out-of-state institutions after an OPB investigation uncovered widespread abuse at the facilities.
The 2020 legislation was never meant to prevent families from being together, Gelser Blouin said in an interview. It was designed to stop the practice of sending kids to institutions in other states with little oversight.
Gelser Blouin was surprised to hear the law was being interpreted to prevent the Joslyns from taking care of their grandson. The boy’s mother is unable to care for him.
“Will you please help me better understand what the barrier is in this situation?” Gelser Blouin wrote to child-welfare officials in October, according to an email obtained by OPB via a public records request.
In a response to Gelser Blouin’s email in October, a state official wrote they agreed “it is in the best interest of this child to be placed with this family in North Carolina.” But they believed a “statutory change is necessary to allow for this type of a placement.”
Jake Sunderland, a spokesman for DHS, told OPB the issue came up in 2024. The state’s Department of Human Services asked for guidance around the law from the state’s Department of Justice that year.
Because the Spainhaur-Joslyn’s contracted with a local nonprofit in North Carolina, a third party, to certify their home as a therapeutic foster home, that nonprofit needed to be certified by Oregon Department of Human Services if the child was to be sent to North Carolina. The North Carolina nonprofit declined to go through Oregon’s licensing process, according to Sunderland.
DHS is one of the state’s largest agencies and has been scrutinized in recent years for failing to care for some of Oregon’s most at-risk residents.
The agency’s current budget includes $7.5 billion in general fund dollars and more than 11,300 positions. There are currently 4,584 children placed in Oregon’s child-welfare system.
Gelser Blouin is no stranger to being at odds with the state’s Department of Human Services.
But the testimony from the Joslyns last week had committee members from both parties outraged.
Sen. Christine Drazan, R-Canby, noted she was new to the committee.
“You’re here to serve these kids … but from what I’m hearing and I’m fresh to all of this, I’m horrified,” Drazan, who is running for governor, said last week.
The Joslyns told the lawmakers all they want for their grandson is to have him at their house so he can “run through the yard with his cousins and play ball.”
