Bazelon Center: News and Features

Court Asked to End California’s Denial of Services to Foster Children

Tue, 1 Nov 2005 15:03:42 -0500

On Monday, October 31st, lawyers for 85,000 children in California’s foster care system will ask the federal district court in Los Angeles to require state officials to provide the mental health services that at least two thirds of the children need to avoid institutionalization or juvenile detention?services the state’s Medi-Cal program for the poor and disabled is obligated to cover under federal Medicaid law.

The class action known as Katie A. v. Bonta was filed in July 2002. It challenges California’s longstanding practice of confining children who are in the state’s foster care system or at risk of removal from their families and who have mental health needs in hospitals and large group homes instead of providing services that would enable them to stay in their own homes and communities.

“We seek services that are essential to keep these kids with their families, with relatives or with foster families in their communities,” said Robert Newman, an attorney at the Western Center on Law & Poverty, lead counsel in the case.

"Without appropriate services, children with mental disabilities bounce between foster home placements and group homes,” said Ira Burnim, legal director of the Washington DC-based Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “When their worsening mental condition renders them ‘unplaceable,’ they are abandoned to languish in institutions or fall into the juvenile justice system."

In 2003, Los Angeles County settled its portion of the lawsuit, agreeing to close the notorious MacLaren Children’s Center and develop appropriate services in the community. However, an expert panel found in August 2005 that the county had not yet even developed a plan to provide community services to the 50,000 children in its foster care system--the nation’s largest. In an effort to refocus the county’s efforts, lawyers for the children recently invoked the settlement’s dispute-resolution process.

In the overall suit against the state, Judge A. Howard Matz will be asked to give the health and social services agencies 30 days to develop a plan and another 30 days to actually begin providing the two most critical services statewide: family-based “wraparound” and therapeutic foster care (TFC). Experts contend that these two services “can turn around a child’s negative trajectory and produce virtual miracles,” according to papers filed with the court. “Each day that passes marks another day lost,” the request points out, for children “whose conditions steadily worsen without access to wraparound and TFC.”

Some California counties do provide the requested services to some children. "We know that given the right tools, even children taken from the cruelest of circumstances have a remarkable resilience and ability to adapt," said Melinda Bird, managing attorney of Protection & Advocacy, Inc. (PAI). "Providing those tools is not only the right course, it is the most efficient course, relieving human suffering, but also strengthening our society and using scarce resources wisely."

A consortium of state and national public interest groups represents the children, includingPAI, the Bazelon Center, the Western Center on Law & Poverty, the National Center for Youth Law and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, along with the law firm of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, LLP

Unregulated Residential Treatment Facilities Exploit Children and Families

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:13:53 -0500

Unregulated Residential Treatment Facilities Exploit Children
and Families, Say Mental Health Experts and Advocates

Urge GAO Inquiry and Passage of Legislation

Washington, DCLeading mental health experts and advocates today urged
Congress to provide critical oversight of so-called therapeutic board schools
and residential treatment centers in the United States and abroad that prey
on unwitting families whose children have serious mental health needs.

These facilities operate free of any oversight or regulation and with
methods that have no grounding in research or conventional practice, according
to Dr. Charles Huffine, a leading expert in child and adolescent psychiatry,
speaking at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the Alliance
for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment (A START). Young
people tell me of being forced to lie still at a table with their heads down
for hours at a time, or worse, being made to lay face down on the floor for
hours and subjected to harsh physical punishment if they seek relief.

A START, a multi-disciplinary taskforce coordinated by the Florida
Mental Health Institute and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, has studied
the increased marketing of unlicensed and unregulated residential programs
to desperate families as the best treatment for their childrens mental
health needs. Today the group delivered a
letter from leading mental health professionals to Reps. Pete Stark and George Miller (D-CA), calling for an
investigation of these facilities by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The letter also expresses support for Rep. Miller's "End
Institutionalized Abuse Against Children Act of 2005" (H.R. 1738) and the bipartisan Keeping
Families Together Act (introduced in the House by Rep. Stark).

Among speakers at the briefing was Christine Gomez, who had unknowingly placed
her son in unregulated facilities in Montana and Jamaica, where he was kept
from communicating with his family for over a year and from which he emerged
physically and mentally traumatized. Gomez describes the guilt I felt
over having been so naïve and trusting. She now reaches out to
other families, including some who liquidated their assets and sold
their homes to get help for their children only to find that help was
not on the program at the facilities where their children went.

In addition to professionals and advocates, speakers at the briefing included
a former staff member of an unlicensed treatment center and a young woman who
had been placed in such a facility. All of the speakers remarks are
online at http://cfs.fmhi.usf.edu/projects/AStartDocs/pressbrief.pdf. To reach
former program participants and families who are willing to share their stories
with the media is available, contact the Bazelon Center or the Florida Mental
Health Institute (see above).

To induce families to send their children to these programs, parents
have been told that they must make immediate placements before it is too
late, said Dr. Robert Friedman, chair of the Department of Child
and Family Studies of the University of South Florida. Tragically, it
is now too late for many young people who have died in these
programs or suffered great harm. Congress must act quickly to protect other
children whose families are being told the same lies.

While most experts agree that even children with serious emotional and behavioral
problems can and should be served in their homes and communities, the speakers
agreed that there is a place for residential care. Residential treatment
facilities should be reserved for children and youth whose dangerous behavior
cannot be controlled except in a secure setting, concluded Tammy
Seltzer,
senior staff attorney at the Bazelon Center. They should not be opportunities
for unscrupulous and unaccountable entrepreneurs to get rich quick at the expense
of children and families who need responsible and effective mental health treatment.
We ask Congress to protect children and families by improving access to appropriate
mental health treatment and increasing oversight of those who only pretend
to have childrens best interests at heart.

Press Briefing on Unregulated Private Residential Treatment Facilities

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 12:19:11 -0500

Untitled Document

Washington (October 13, 2005)-- On October 18, leading experts in children's
mental health will hold a press briefing to report on the unlicensed and unregulated
residential treatment programs being sold to desparate families as the best
treatment for their children's mental health needs.

The Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Use of Residential
Treatment ("A START"), a multi-disciplinary taskforce coordinated
by the Florida Mental Health Institute and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health
Law, is seeking a GAO investigation into these facilities because of the shocking
lack of information available on these unregulated "therapeutic boarding
schools." A START is also calling on members of Congress to co-sponsor
the End Institutionalized
Abuse Against Children Act and the Keeping
Families Together Act.

The press briefing will take place at theU.S. Capitol Building, Room HC-9
on Tuesday, October 18, 2005, 3:00-4:00 pm. Below is a list of planned speakers:

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), introduced the Keeping
Families Together Act.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), introduced the Ending
Institutional Abuse of Children Act.

Robert Friedman, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Child
and Family Studies, Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida.

Charles Huffine, M.D., former President of the American Association
of Community Psychiatrists, currently assistant medical director for child
and adolescent programs at King County Mental Health in Seattle, WA.

Christine Gomez, parent of a child who was placed in two
unlicensed residential treatment facilities, one in the US and another in Jamaica.

Kathryn Whitehead, placed in an unlicensed residential treatment
facility as an adolescent, regularly communicates with other young people around
the country about their experiences in such institutions.

Nicki Bush, former staff member at a residential treatment
facility, where she worked as a program evaluator, and currently in a Ph.D.
program at the University of Washington.

Tammy Seltzer, Esq., a senior staff attorney at the Bazelon
Center for Mental Health Law, works on a broad array of issues that affect
children with emotional and behavioral problems, including Medicaid/EPSDT,
special education and their increasing incarceration.

Live interview with Bazelon staff attorney on the ADA and people with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:07:14 -0500

Live interview with Bazelon staff attorney on the ADA and people with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system

Hurricane Evacuees May Be Housed at Other Low-Income Families' Expense

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 16:29:48 -0500

September 28, 2005—Updated news: On September 23, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a new program to house victims of Hurricane Katrina. HUD officials said that they would fund the program with the new, supplemental funds provided by Congress for hurricane relief. Days later, HUD has sent legislation to Congress asking that their remaining FY '05 and '06 housing funds be diverted to pay for hurricane housing, rather than pre-hurricane housing needs.