The child welfare agency that serves Vinton County will be getting $1 million from the state to take care of the 16 children who were recently removed from a home in the tiny village of Hamden near Wellston. First responders found the kids living in what's been described as deplorable conditions in a filthy and dangerous home. The Ohio Controlling Board approved the emergency expenditure Monday afternoon.
Ohio Department of Children and Youth Chief Governmental and External Affairs Officer Joel Potts told the Ohio Controlling Board the three-county agency that serves Vinton County saw its caseload double overnight when it took in the children.
“Many of them will be needing therapeutic foster care for quite some time to come. That is $150-$250 a day per average per child, so those costs alone would bankrupt the county," Potts said.
Potts said there will likely be additional needs and more money may be needed in the future.
Some of the kids were hospitalized, and authorities say two were near death. The children's parents Gary Siders Jr. and Elizabeth Siders, and the children's grandparents Gary Siders Sr. and Christina Siders, were arrested and charged with child endangerment.
Details about the case are largely still unknown, but there are questions about how the children went unnoticed for years. And Potts said the magnitude of the case is overwhelming, especially in Vinton County.
“This is unprecedented – what we’ve seen – a county agency literally double the number of kids in temporary custody overnight," Potts said. "It is something that no community would be ready to handle if they suddenly saw their caseloads doubling. The dollars are to immediately provide those resources so that the community can make the proper decisions based on the needs of the kids and not the budget.”
Authorities have determined 33-year-old Elizabeth Siders is the mother of all 16 children. She married Gary Siders Jr. in 2008 in West Virginia when she was 15 and pregnant. On June 30, officers discovered the 16 children, ranging in age from 17 months to 18 years old, in a 12x12 room inside the home in Hamden. First responders said the children were largely unable to communicate at the time.
“The conditions these children lived in were horrific, and we are sickened by it," said Vinton County Sheriff Ryan Cain said in a statement after the children were removed from the home.
The case remains under investigation.
