The state of Rhode Island and the U.S. Department of Justice have reached an agreement on how to ensure that children in state care without a medical need to be in psychiatric wards will be able to go home and receive care integrated into their daily lives.
Hundreds of young teenagers and adolescent kids were unfairly isolated in psychiatric wards in Bradley Hospital over the last several years because of the failure of a Rhode Island state agency, according to U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha.
“That failure concerned a repeated, persistent pattern of behavior in which these children were unnecessarily and illegally confined in an acute care psychiatric institution,” Cunha said at a press conference on Thursday. “Often for weeks or months longer than their conditions required.”
The proposed plan comes in the form of a consent decree, which was filed in District Court on Thursday and must be accepted by a judge in order to become official.
The consent decree requires the state to hire a third-party consultant to oversee a restructuring of this psychiatric care — a process which the U.S. Attorney’s office will oversee. It also requires the creation of a stakeholder advisory group, which will continue to observe the state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) to ensure it is not isolating children without a medical need. As part of the agreement, a compliance officer will supervise the state and if they find the DCYF is continuing to keep kids isolated without a medical necessity, the state will be found in contempt of the court.
The state will also be charged with ensuring that each child who leaves the psychiatric wards has a plan for their recovery, assistance from a care coordinator, and access to home therapy, family therapy, individualized therapy, a caseworker from DCYF and a mentor.
Cunha stressed that the hundreds of cases of isolation are not the fault of Bradley Hospital, but of DCYF.
The burden of funding to provide all of these support workers is also on the state, which Cunha said must additionally come up with a plan to “address workforce shortages in children’s providers” as well as to “recruit and retain more therapeutic foster care parents and offer mobile crisis assistance in order to stabilize emergencies and keep children out of hospitals in the first place.”
“This is not a declaration of victory. Success is not a court filing,” he said. “Success is getting kids who don’t need to be there out of a locked ward and back into safe homes and communities with a chance to laugh and play and learn and have a childhood.”
A class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy organizations against the State of Rhode Island over psychiatric care for Rhode Island children remains pending.
