The Director of Reno County Youth Services, Bill Hermes was before the Reno County Commission Tuesday telling them about changes being ordered by the Juvenile Justice Authority and SRS, where youth shelters and youth detention facilities will have to be separate.

That means changes will be coming to the Bob Johnson Youth Shelter here in Hutchinson. Hermes told the commission that he wants to stay as a detention center and give up handling “Child In Need Of Care cases.” (CINC)

He tells us for that there’s a difference between those held in the youth shelter and those held in the detention facility. There are some kids that are offenders, those who commit minor offenses such as shoplifting, or something like that which are housed with CINC kids. The ones who have committed more serious or violent crimes are kept on the detention side.

With the changes in the rules by Juvenile Justice and SRS, the facility has to make a choice between the two and Hermes told the County Commission that he wants to go with the detention side because the numbers are larger with 202 entering the facility from police last year, while only 112 entered the child in need of care side.

Hermes says the decision to change may be based on a Wichita Eagle story about a facility in Wichita which may have been housing child sex offenders with children in need of care. He says that makes sense, and that should never happen, which he says doesn’t at the Reno County facility.

He says with the decision to only house those in the detention facility, those kids in need of care may have to be housed out of county, say at a facility in Wichita. There is an emergency shelter, but that’s for kids 10 and under, and they house a maximum of 7-kids.

Hermes told the commission that Butler County is upset with this because they house of lot of their cases in Reno County, and with the new rule, they may have to look elsewhere.

Now, this change is expected to take effect July 1, however, the top two people at the Juvenile Justice Authority in Topeka have left their positions, so whether that will effect things going forward is unknown.