A Portland nonprofit that serves unaccompanied children says 73 jobs could disappear at the end of the year unless the federal government renews a grant that keeps two of its programs running. Morrison Health & Family Services filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the state on Oct. 30, warning that the layoffs would take effect Dec. 31, 2026, if the Office of Refugee Resettlement does not approve its grant renewal application.
According to KOIN, the two affected programs are Morrison's Home Study & Post Release Services program and its Long Term Group Home, both funded by a grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which falls under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Home Study & Post Release Services program serves unaccompanied children who enter the United States without a parent or caregiver, while the Long Term Group Home offers long-term residential care for unaccompanied children. Per the WARN notice, both programs will close if the grant is not renewed.
Who Would Be Affected
The 73 positions facing possible cuts span a range of roles: 16 milieu counselors, 15 case managers, 14 administrative and support workers, 13 home study caseworkers, 13 supervisors and two clinicians, the station's report states. Morrison CEO Nick Gallo told KOIN that the organization has served children and families across Oregon and beyond for close to a century and that its commitment has not changed.
As of the filing, Gallo said Morrison has not received a final answer from Washington. “We have not received any formal communication about the status of funding after December 31, 2026, and our programs continue to operate today,” he said, per the same account. The WARN notice itself does not state that funding has been denied — only that the layoffs would be triggered if renewal does not come through.
A Shrinking National System, By the Numbers
The uncertainty in Portland comes amid a broader pullback in federal support for programs serving unaccompanied children nationwide. A spokesperson for the U.S. Administration for Children and Families told KOIN that just over 1,600 unaccompanied children are currently in care, down from 22,000 during the previous administration, and said that demand for services for unaccompanied children no longer exists under the Trump administration in the way it once did. The spokesperson said crossings of unaccompanied children at the southern border have significantly declined since President Trump returned to office, citing 6,114 encounters in December 2024 compared with 733 by February 2025.
A separate accounting from New York Focus offers a different starting point, reporting that unaccompanied children in federal custody fell from nearly 7,000 at the end of 2024 to about 1,800 in the days before its May report — a baseline that does not match the 22,000 figure cited by the federal spokesperson for the prior administration. The discrepancy between the two counts is not resolved in either report. The federal spokesperson said the Office of Refugee Resettlement's goal is to end child trafficking and smuggling, and argued that maintaining facilities with few or no children in care is not a responsible use of taxpayer dollars and does not improve care. Remaining unaccompanied minors are being cared for at facilities across the nation, including locations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas and California, with placement decisions accounting for each child's age, health and behavioral needs, and access to legal and case management services, the spokesperson said.
Other Providers Have Already Been Hit
Morrison is not the only provider caught in the funding squeeze. In New York, the Times Union reported that the Children's Home of Poughkeepsie is closing its program for unaccompanied migrant children and laying off 39 workers after the Office of Refugee Resettlement did not renew its grant funding, a decision that followed more than $27 million in federal funding the nonprofit had received for the 2026 fiscal year. All of the program's employees there are set to be laid off on Dec. 28 unless they take another position within the organization.
New York Focus's analysis of state data found that nonprofits affected by the federal cuts planned to lay off about 1,000 employees altogether, including Rising Ground, which said it was cutting 257 employees — more than 10 percent of its staff — after losing its contract to house unaccompanied children. The same report found at least five New York nonprofits had collectively received more than $600 million over the previous five years before that funding was eliminated, and that by December 2025, only about 300 of the state's 1,958 beds for unaccompanied children were occupied.
What Comes Next for Morrison
For now, Morrison's fate rests on a federal decision that has not been announced. Oregon's WARN process is enforced through the United States district courts, according to the state's Rapid Response Activity Tracking System, with the Higher Education Coordinating Commission's Office of Workforce Investments available to provide guidance to affected workers. Whether the Office of Refugee Resettlement renews Morrison's grant before the Dec. 31 deadline remains an open question, and neither Morrison nor the federal government has indicated how or when that decision will be made public.
