Monday, July 21, 2003

Care of troubled kids at crossroads (Illinois)
Chicago Sun-Times story - "[The] price gap between foster care and ... residential treatment is playing out not just in Illinois, but nationally. As a result, child-welfare officials in several states are scaling back the number of kids they're sending to big facilities, instead using that money to place them with foster families and surround them with daily help tending to their social, educational and, in many cases, psychiatric needs. Kids--even severely troubled ones--are responding well to that home-based form of treatment, generally known as "wraparound," experts say. A program in Milwaukee County, Wis., for example, has reduced the number of youths in residential care there from 375 in the mid-1990s to fewer than 60 now. A Bush administration mental health commission praised it in December for cutting juvenile crime and saving taxpayers millions of dollars."  
  

Officials say mental health system lacks coordination
July 18 MaineToday story - "Federal health and juvenile justice officials acknowledged on Thursday that mental-health services for children offer a confusing patchwork of programs with little coordination. But the officials assured a Senate panel that they would work toward greater cooperation in the future. The programs under the Department of Health and Human Services have different eligibility rules and no single source to explain them, witnesses said. If a child is detained in the juvenile justice system, the ailment that provoked the crisis might not be diagnosed or treated - and the cost increases dramatically with confinement."