Remember this next time you hear people arguing that we should limit who can take care of, or adopt, kids in need (or that we shouldn't build a group home in their neighborhood):
Investigations by the Chicago Tribune have found that some kids are being held in psychiatric wards, hospitals, and jails long past when they were supposed to be released because there is no where for them to go. Often when they are released, they are being sent to placements that don't meet the recommendations made for them (such as residential drug-treatment first or a home ready for special-needs kids).
These are tough-to-place kids, mostly teens, with multiple problems. But as the article so clearly points out, there are few ways to better ensure that someone's mental health and behavior issues don't get better than to essentially imprison them somewhere where they are no longer getting the services they need/serving the sentence they received. The investigation was sparked by a 14-year-old who had been in a mental hospital for 105 days, when doctors had cleared to leave after a couple weeks. She hadn't been outside or to school that whole time.
It's sad enough to not be able to find an adoptive home for a mentally ill teenager, but nowhere for her to go outside of the psych ward? That's seriously depressing.
Photo by Skelekitten.
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