Troubled youths in dangerous places
December 13, 2006
Residential treatment for disturbed
youths can be dangerous to their health; the governor needs to act
now to improve it.
Youth with emotional and behavioral
disorders severe enough to land them in treatment centers are at
risk of injury or even death because of Virginia's lack of oversight
and lax standards.
The Kaine administration did not
create this long-running scandal. But it needs to act, and soon, to
improve the system.
A report this week by a legislative
watchdog group cites 12 unnatural or unexplained deaths among
residents of these homes statewide in the past five years. While
most of the 300 youth homes licensed to operate in Virginia are
deemed safe, those that are not rarely face severe penalties.
The Joint Legislative Audit and
Review Commission investigation found that 12 percent of the
residential facilities received citations for 10 or more critical
violations of licensing requirements last year alone. Of those, 25
percent were not sanctioned at all. The state shut down two, and
three closed voluntarily.
One residential treatment facility
-- which, the report noted, charges a daily rate of $350 -- was
cited 25 times over three years for violations of so-called critical
standards. Among eight substantiated complaints against the center
were medication errors, residents having sex with each other and
residents being injured while restrained or secluded. Yet the state
took no enforcement action.
One treatment center was fined
$1,500 after a child drowned in an unsupervised whirlpool bath. With
such minor deterrence, unnecessary deaths can become just a cost of
doing business.
Understaffed state agencies
sometimes fail to make frequent enough or thorough enough
inspections -- or to make them at all. JLARC found 27 facilities had
not been inspected over a year's time.
Lax enforcement is just part of a
grim picture, though. The state sets woefully inadequate state
licensing requirements for professional staff who develop and
implement residential treatment plans for children whose behavioral
or emotional problems are so severe they cannot be dealt with at
home.
Gov. Tim Kaine rightfully received
a measure of criticism, too -- in the report and from state
lawmakers -- for failing to move forward with new regulations for
residential youth facilities that have been in the works since 2004.
JLARC's findings are serious enough to demand Kaine's attention.
Yet even legislators conceded
Monday that existing regulations should have prevented most of the
abuses cited in the report. That they didn't might be traced back to
the lack of a clear line of accountability: Education, juvenile
justice, social services and mental health agencies all share
responsibility for the treatment of these troubled youth.
The new rules will not fix all the
system's problems. But they're a start. The governor should
implement them, or offer something better.
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