$76 million could fix Colorado’s youth mental health system, study finds as kids are sent out of state for care – By Jennifer Brown (Colorado Sun) / February 21, 2022
“We don’t do this to kids with cancer.” Residential treatment centers for youth have warned for years that they’re headed for collapse.
The operators of Colorado’s youth residential treatment centers, where children with the most acute mental health struggles go to recover, have warned for years that the system could fall apart without more funding.
There are signs it’s happening now.
Suicidal kids are waiting weeks, sometimes months, in hospital emergency rooms for a bed at a treatment center. Child welfare caseworkers are sleeping in county buildings or hotel rooms with children and teens when they can find no safe place for them to go. Dozens of kids are going to treatment centers out of state because Colorado’s options are so slim. And the Colorado centers that have stayed open are often overwhelmed, and spend hours each day chasing after children and teens who run away.
More than 1,000 beds, and 44 youth treatment centers, have closed since 2007. Of the 40 centers left in Colorado, only a handful are willing to take young people with the most severe mental and behavioral health problems.
CONTINUE > https://coloradosun.com/2022/02/21/childrens-mental-health-residential-beds/
