The Jane Does In This World

There has been a lot in the news recently about the 16 year old Jane Doe who was held in an adult women’s prison, but she is just the tip of the iceberg.

Children stuck in crisis
Connecticut's psychiatric emergency gets worse
CT Mirror
By Arielle Levin Becker

"The mental health system in Connecticut is just a series of ER visits and hospitalizations, but there’s no continuity. ... I hate to say this, but I really feel like they just expect kids like my son to end up in jail." 

—Kathleen Harding-Wheeler, mother of a child with mental health needs and developmental disorder

And that is the truth! If it wasn’t for all the protests and all the people working for her on the inside and her lawyer, Jane Doe would still be in the women’s prison until she turned 18 and then she would have been tossed out on the street.

“The mental health system in Connecticut is just a series of ER visits and hospitalizations, but there’s no continuity,” Harding-Wheeler said.

Some people have advised her to take more drastic action to get Peter the mental health care he needs.

“People have said to us, ‘Bring him to the ER and don’t go back, don’t answer their calls, don’t do anything,'" Harding-Wheeler said. They've told her the Department of Children and Families would file neglect charges against her and her husband, and would find Peter a place in residential treatment while investigating.

But she can’t bring herself to do it. Making her son feel abandoned doesn’t seem like the right way to help him.

The article goes on to say that Peter is not alone, at sometimes there are twenty children like Peter waiting in the ER for a place to stay or to be evaluated. Some link the problem to the DCF,

And some clinicians, including Namerow, see a link to the push in recent years by the state Department of Children and Families to have more children and adolescents living in family settings, rather than in residential treatment or group homes and other types of congregate care. Clinicians and other mental health providers say they agree with the goal, but that without adequate services to support those young people in the community, the shift can produce problems for the kids, with ripple effects for the rest of the system. Department officials caution against drawing a connection.

Critics want to cut the DCF budget even more but what they don’t say is the number of children in DCF care while have decreased the complexity of the cases have increased. The CT Mirror reported last October,

The state agency responsible for caring for thousands of abused and neglected children would finally be on the right path to ending 20 years of federal court oversight if not for its "inadequate" staffing levels, the court monitor overseeing the agency reports. Because there are too few social workers and every case they receive now is complex, "the system is stressed," the monitor reports.

The Department of Children and Families has 398 fewer caseload-carrying social workers today than in January 2011 –- a 29 percent reduction. Agencywide, the department has 326 fewer staff members (which includes social workers and other positions) since fiscal 2011 -- a 9 percent drop.

“Social workers reluctantly note on a fairly regular basis that they are forced to make difficult decisions on how to allocate their case management efforts. They describe their inability to effectively meet all of the daily demands to assist their clients,” Raymond Mancuso, the federal court monitor, reported last week.
[…]
But there's a rub: The court monitor and other child advocates worry that the agency’s efforts to divert less-severe cases to nonprofit providers have left workers with caseloads of 100 percent difficult and demanding cases.

“Staffing levels are inadequate given the complexity of cases that now make up the pool of investigations and ongoing service cases that social workers have on their caseloads,” Mancuso reports.

The understaffing has taken a toll on Jane Doe and Peter and all the other children “in the system” and it is only going to get worst.

Meanwhile,

Let’s Continue to Improve Justice for LGBT Youth
National Council for Behavioral Health
Spark Action
By Adam D. Swanson
June 23, 2014

As Congress considers reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), there is an opportunity to substantially improve the way our justice system deals with youth delinquency and its prevention. Through this process, it is important that vulnerable LGBT youth — years away from feeling the effect of strides like Windsor v. U.S. — are not left behind. LGBT Americans under the age of 18 experience higher rates of violence; are four times more likely to attempt suicide; are disproportionately homeless; and are more likely to be involved in the juvenile justice system when compared to their heterosexual peers.

Young LGBT individuals are exposed to several risk factors that increase their chances of interacting with the justice system. Chief among these are frequently hostile school environments. Research indicates a majority of LGB children begin to identify their same-sex attractions as early as age 10. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the more than 7,000 LGBT students surveyed in 2009 between the ages of 13 and 21, eight in every ten students had been verbally harassed, 40 percent had been physically harassed, and one in every five had been the victim of a physical assault at school within the past year.

For 2014 budget the White House has proposed $70 million for the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) Title II State Formula Grants Program and the House budgeted only $20 million. For the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant (JABG) Program, White House proposed $30 million and the House proposed $0 and for the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act Title V Delinquency Prevention Program, White House proposed $65 million and the House $0.

At a time when kids are at their most vulnerable and at time where they can be helped to become productive adults the rug is going to be pulled out from them. When ERs are back upped with kids needing mental health care, when kids like Jane Doe are thrown in adult prison instead of therapy, the Republicans have not just cut the budget but have written it out of the budget altogether.