The US house's Education and labor full committee had a hearing on May 14th and passed a bill which would directly regulate residential treatment facilities (one of my pet peeves-if you don't know anything about this issue a good place to start is this Government Accountability Report) for minors at a federal level, enforced by random visits, mandatory reports, civil penalties, and federal private rights of action.
This may not make it of course-becuase some of the facilities trying to be regulated don't receive federal funds-and the congressmen may be wondering whether the proposed law would be constitutionally valid under interstate commerce doctrine. Also the appropriation to fund the oversight is a bundle, and it only passed committee by 27-17.
I would have required states to regulate the facilities and simply threatened to remove regular educational funding as a penalty.
We will see where this goes. I'm optimistic becuase it does appear that the issue will see debate on the whole house floor. It would be nice if our congress knew that there was more regulation of animal shelters than there are for residential treatment of teens in some states. It would be nice if they heard about widespread allegations of physical torture and cult like brainwashing sometimes resulting in death. It would be nice if they knew these programs were funded by unwitting parents requiring second mortgages promised expert treatment by professionals. it would be nice if the victims of these facilities were no longer forced to sensor their thoughts out of fear of more punishment.
it would be nice.
Showing posts with label residential treatment of teens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label residential treatment of teens. Show all posts
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
teens get elctorshok b/c of caller pretending to be supervisor
Call to a treatment center pretending to be a residential treatment facility supervisor. Staff threatened by "supervisor" that they must give a certain resident electroshock or be punished. Nobody checked his treatment plan-the staff just did it.
Caller turns out to be former resident, who wanted to get back at somebody in the facility.
Boy treated in hospital for two first degree burns from 77 rounds of electroshock.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/20/staff_faulted_in_use_of_shock/
the really disturbing thing: the facility regularly uses electroshock not just as a treatment: but as a punishment for misbehaving. Acording to the article..the facility now only uses the shocks for discipline when its court approved...of course..this one certainly was not.
Caller turns out to be former resident, who wanted to get back at somebody in the facility.
Boy treated in hospital for two first degree burns from 77 rounds of electroshock.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/12/20/staff_faulted_in_use_of_shock/
the really disturbing thing: the facility regularly uses electroshock not just as a treatment: but as a punishment for misbehaving. Acording to the article..the facility now only uses the shocks for discipline when its court approved...of course..this one certainly was not.
GAO report and congreesional investigation of one of my pet peeve US human rights issues
this has been going on for over a decade: private residential treatment facilities claiming to use tough love on teens...and charging exorbitant tuition: only to essentially neglect and abuse many of the children sent to the programs. It' has received sporadic media attention..butt its never really caught the eye of the government.
thankfully GAO will produce another fuller report soon (this preliminary one was in oct of 07) and there has already been a congressional investigatory hearing.
DOJ has been asked to do this investigation repeatedly by the congressmen who requested this report..and has turned it down again and again...maybe this will convince them.
very interesting reading..reports and allegations based on testimony at the hearing, civil and criminal cases include deaths from neglect and malnourishment while being forced to do strenuous exercise...to forcing children to eat own vomit and use toothbrushes used to clean toilets for their own mouths.
as the GAO investigator said at the hearing..
if you start reading in the middle of the report..you'd probably think its a human rights investigation of 3rd world countries. but its actually an investigation of what thousands of "rebellious" teens go through every day here in the US.
preliminary report is here. The full report has been late for a while-maybe they are planning something even bigger.
major hub with lots of news and such on related issues at www.caica.org
One of the more startling things about all this (as explained in the reort) is that many states have no regulation of teen residential facilities (no license necessary), and the federal government, rightly to some extent, believes its the states responsibility to regulate, and doesn't regulate either.
The investigation by GAO was done at the request of George Miller (D) California.
thankfully GAO will produce another fuller report soon (this preliminary one was in oct of 07) and there has already been a congressional investigatory hearing.
DOJ has been asked to do this investigation repeatedly by the congressmen who requested this report..and has turned it down again and again...maybe this will convince them.
very interesting reading..reports and allegations based on testimony at the hearing, civil and criminal cases include deaths from neglect and malnourishment while being forced to do strenuous exercise...to forcing children to eat own vomit and use toothbrushes used to clean toilets for their own mouths.
as the GAO investigator said at the hearing..
if you start reading in the middle of the report..you'd probably think its a human rights investigation of 3rd world countries. but its actually an investigation of what thousands of "rebellious" teens go through every day here in the US.
preliminary report is here. The full report has been late for a while-maybe they are planning something even bigger.
major hub with lots of news and such on related issues at www.caica.org
One of the more startling things about all this (as explained in the reort) is that many states have no regulation of teen residential facilities (no license necessary), and the federal government, rightly to some extent, believes its the states responsibility to regulate, and doesn't regulate either.
The investigation by GAO was done at the request of George Miller (D) California.
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