DC sued over failure to help children with mental health troubles – By Kimberly Leonard (washingtonexaminer.com) / Aug 14 2018
Hundreds of emotionally troubled children have been placed into “harmful and unnecessary” detention centers or psychiatric facilities because the District of Columbia failed to help them as required under federal law, according to a class action lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The lawsuit, filed by mental health and disability groups in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, was advanced on behalf of two teenage girls with mental health diagnoses, and encompasses as many 300 children up to the age of 21 who similarly did not receive care.
The lawsuit accuses D.C. of failing to provide children with mental health disorders with social and medical services in their homes, neighborhoods, or at school, an arrangement required under federal law. The lawsuit cites violations of the Medicaid Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring cities to care for children with disabilities in “integrated settings,” meaning not isolated from the rest of the community.
One of the girls, 14, called “M.J.” in the suit, has been diagnosed with several mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, and disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, and been hospitalized at least nine times. She spent a night at a juvenile detential center in 2016 after being arrested for assaulting her mother.
The other plaintiff, named “L.R.,” 17, has been diagnosed with mental health issues including bipolar disorder and PTSD. She has been hospitalized several times, and placed in group homes, mental treatment facilities, and detention centers. She has been arrested several times for fighting.
Neither M.J. nor L.R. has received community services in D.C. and both have struggled to stay in school.
The complaint seeks a federal court order for the D.C. to provide mentoring, counseling, and other types of care. For years, children have waited weeks or months for an appointment with a community provider that would set up the services, but when they do get services they are inadequate, the organizations say in the lawsuit. This causes children to cycle in and out of juvenile detention facilities, group homes, psychiatric hospitals, or residential psychiatric facilities, many of which are hundreds of miles outside D.C.
The types of care at stake help patients not just with setting up medication and therapy, but also by aiding children through anger management, schooling, mentoring, and teaching social skills. They help parents with housing and nutrition services, and with understanding when children are in danger and how to get help.
“We are losing kids because the system isn’t working so children can be connected to the services they need and have good life outcomes,” Lewis Bossing, senior staff attorney for the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, said in an interview. “It’s a problem that has been going on for a long time and the District hasn’t addressed it and needs to address it.”
Other than the Bazelon Center, Disability Rights D.C., the National Center for Youth Law, and Schulte Roth & Zabel also are behind the lawsuit.
The organizations argue that the services are needed to help children succeed in school and in a job later in life. Without them, their mental health conditions may worsen, causing them to become incarcerated as adults and making it difficult for them to find jobs later in life.
They have asked D.C. officials several times over the years to provide the services, and offered to help, but said that the city has failed to deliver, leaving them no choice but to seek legal intervention.
“The steps the District has taken to serve these children’s urgent needs are woefully inadequate,” Alice Abrokwa, an attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, said in a statement. “The District needs to fix this now.”
A spokesperson for the mayor said the office does not comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit specifically applies to children who are covered under Medicaid, a government-funded healthcare program for low-income and vulnerable people.
