A former Port Angeles couple are contracting with Clallam County to send at-risk youth to their newly opened Montana home for boys.
If the contract is approved, county Juvenile and Family Services could provide funding for juvenile offenders to live at Homestead Ranch, a Montana-licensed Christian home.
This will be Juvenile Services’ first contract with a residential program and their first out-of-state contract, Program Coordinator Dave Fluke said this week.
Funding, if available, will come from grants and foundations, not from the county budget, Fluke said.
“With the current state of things, it’s not likely — in fact, it’s virtually a dead certainty — that it will not come out of county funds,” he said.
Homestead Ranch is owned by Pat and Dee Hense, who moved from Port Angeles to Malta, Mont., in 1999 to start the non-denominational Christian boys home.
Hense, an ordained pastor in the Independent Christian Churches, worked as a volunteer chaplain and part-time detention officer for Juvenile Services for nine years before leaving Port Angeles.
The couple’s relationship with Juvenile Services is partly why they sought to contract with Clallam County, Hense said.
“We’ve had a very positive feeling,” he said.
