By: Blaise Mesa TOPEKA, Kan. — Two Kansas foster runaways died in 2022. The body of one turned up in an empty lot in Kansas City, Kansas. The second stole a car and crashed into a semi truck near Parsons. The deaths of those children prompted criticism of the Kansas Department for Children and Families, the agency […]
By Andy Miller and Rebecca Grapevine One night last month, a 9-year-old boy who had autism and talked about killing himself was among about 70 foster care children and youth under state supervision sleeping in hotels across Georgia. Georgia’s designated health insurer for foster care, Amerigroup Community Care, had denied the boy placement in a psychiatric […]
By: Lillian Reed and Darcy Costello Civil rights organizations and advocates representing three Maryland teens are challenging the state’s oversight of medical records for foster children receiving psychotropic drugs, according to a new federal lawsuit filed this week. One in three Maryland foster children are being given psychotropic medications, often without a documented psychiatric diagnosis, […]
By Liz Bowie and Hallie Miller A federal class action lawsuit filed Tuesday against the state of Maryland alleges that hundreds of foster care children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs without adequate medical oversight, putting them in danger of overdoses and serious side effects. Of the one third of foster children prescribed psychotropic drugs, half are given more than one […]
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KGAN) — Disability Rights Iowa, Children’s Rights, National Health Law Program, and Ropes & Gray, LLP have filed a lawsuit against the state claiming that Iowa is denying Medicaid-eligible children their legal right to mental health care. The filing comes as the need for mental health services among Iowa’s children has reached crisis levels. Iowa […]
by: Taj Simmons DES MOINES, Iowa — Several disability rights groups announced a lawsuit against Iowa’s Department of Health and Human Services Friday for allegedly denying needed mental health care for children in crisis. The class action lawsuit hinges on the testimony of three teenagers who all say they were institutionalized because of the state’s failure to […]
A class-action lawsuit filed against the state by children’s rights advocates claims Iowa is denying Medicaid-eligible children their legal right to mental health care. Disability Rights Iowa, along with national health and law advocacy organizations, filed the suit in district court Friday, accusing state officials of a “longstanding failure” to provide children with legally required and medically […]
Disability rights advocates and NAACP claim foster care children with disabilities being sent to psychiatric residential treatment facilities in NC are disproportionately children of color.
A federal lawsuit has been filed against state Health Secretary Kody Kinsley addressing the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services’ foster-care placement services for children with disabilities. The complaint was filed Tuesday in the Middle District of N.C. on behalf of a class of youth in foster care with mental and behavioral health needs. […]
Crystal Klunk’s daughter suffers inside one of North Carolina’s psychiatric residential treatment facilities — a place that resembles solitary prison confinement more than a care facility meant to help kids with mental health issues, the mom says. Spotty supervision, sporadic treatment and only occasional schooling have been part of the girl’s experience, Klunk said. They […]
