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ProPublica: Out of Options, California Ships Hundreds of Troubled Children Out of State
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/california_ships_hundreds_troubled_children_out_of_state_20160105/
Out of Options, California Ships Hundreds of Troubled Children Out of State
One 14-year-old boy’s search for care takes him to Utah as his home state struggles to safeguard its most challenging children.
Posted on Jan 5, 2016
By Joaquin Sapien / ProPublica
This piece originally ran on ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/california-ships-hundreds-of-troubled-children-out-of-state
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
At 14, Deshaun Becton’s life is a roadmap to California’s faltering efforts to care for its most troubled children.
Over more than a dozen turbulent years, he lived with a half-dozen foster families and in five different group homes. Now he is among the more than 900 children that California sends to out-of-state residential facilities, most of them in Utah, a ProPublica analysis shows.
Each of these children represents a surrender of sorts: a tacit acknowledgement that California — the nation’s biggest and, by some measures, richest state — somehow has no good answer for them.
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The Bectons say the approach of government agencies in finding the right fit for Deshaun has often felt as random and scattershot as theirs. Some of this, they accept, is a consequence of his distinctive profile: he exhibits some symptoms of autism, yet not in a manner severe enough to qualify him for some of the most advanced care.
<>
“What I don’t understand is why aren’t there any options here?” said Veronice. “Is it really about the children? It’s not. If it was, you’d want these kids to be near their families.”
The Bectons recognize the challenge Deshaun presents. He consumes a daily diet of anti-psychotic medications to control his behavior. He has tested his committed family’s best efforts, and he has exasperated the staffs of group homes across the state. His care has cost, by a rough accounting, more than $1 million to his home county and the state of California.
More.
Out of Options, California Ships Hundreds of Troubled Children Out of State
One 14-year-old boy’s search for care takes him to Utah as his home state struggles to safeguard its most challenging children.
Posted on Jan 5, 2016
By Joaquin Sapien / ProPublica
This piece originally ran on ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/california-ships-hundreds-of-troubled-children-out-of-state
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
At 14, Deshaun Becton’s life is a roadmap to California’s faltering efforts to care for its most troubled children.
Over more than a dozen turbulent years, he lived with a half-dozen foster families and in five different group homes. Now he is among the more than 900 children that California sends to out-of-state residential facilities, most of them in Utah, a ProPublica analysis shows.
Each of these children represents a surrender of sorts: a tacit acknowledgement that California — the nation’s biggest and, by some measures, richest state — somehow has no good answer for them.
<>
The Bectons say the approach of government agencies in finding the right fit for Deshaun has often felt as random and scattershot as theirs. Some of this, they accept, is a consequence of his distinctive profile: he exhibits some symptoms of autism, yet not in a manner severe enough to qualify him for some of the most advanced care.
<>
“What I don’t understand is why aren’t there any options here?” said Veronice. “Is it really about the children? It’s not. If it was, you’d want these kids to be near their families.”
The Bectons recognize the challenge Deshaun presents. He consumes a daily diet of anti-psychotic medications to control his behavior. He has tested his committed family’s best efforts, and he has exasperated the staffs of group homes across the state. His care has cost, by a rough accounting, more than $1 million to his home county and the state of California.
More.
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
which mandates disproportionately large budgets to the mentally retarded (which they refer to as "consumers"
and effectively crowds out budgets for other areas of need.
The 21 Regional Centers that administer care for the retarded and their families in California spend much of their collective $3.5 billion budget on outsourced providers - many of them run by friends or relatives of Regional Center executives or California Assemblypeople. Once a contract is approved by Regional Center directors, there is practically nothing by way of accountability.