NICCOLE CAAN KUNSHEK
Journalist
Harsh Treatment
Medill Watchdog at Northwestern University and the Chicago Tribune undertook an unprecedented look inside residential treatment centers designed to help youth with severe emotional, behavioral or mental issues.
There are hundreds across the country. Some are run by non-profits; some by religious organizations; some by for-profit corporations. Some youth are sent there by exasperated parents seeking the best setting for their children. But most commonly these facilities are funded by tax dollars, paid to them by school districts and youth social welfare agencies, after young people are placed there as the best option to help them.
Medill Watchdog interns filed requests for public records from local law enforcement and state and county agencies, to get a picture of the kinds of problems that the facilities are facing. The responses were uneven—some places refused our requests altogether, or said they would only provide them for fees running into thousands of dollars.
But the Medill Watchdog and Chicago Tribune team accumulated a massive number of records—more than 66,000 pages of responses—and then reviewed lawsuits, news accounts and corporate records, as well as conducting hundreds of interviews with former residents, their parents, staff members and officials from the institutions, police officers, state officials and outside experts in the care of disturbed
children.
What emerges is the most comprehensive look inside the residential treatment centers nationwide ever conducted. Running these facilities is no easy task. Some of the youth housed in these institutions are violent, sometimes sent to centers after criminal trouble. Caring for them as well as for children who may have been sexually abused, mentally frail or suicidal is tremendously challenging.
The quality of care, and the quality of oversight provided by officials, is uneven, the review shows. Federal efforts to create uniform standards years ago went no where, and the problems highlighted in congressional hearings in 2007 persist. Often the state and local law enforcement agencies may not even alert each other when incidents occur, making the job of protecting vulnerable youth even more difficult.
The facilities vary, based on state regulations, in how tightly they restrict youth from leaving the facilities. They vary in whether staff can physically restrain out-of-control youth, and what forms of restraint are permitted. They vary in their ability to attract and retain skilled workers.
Among the issues the Medill Watchdog/Tribune investigation uncovered:
Some facilities are plagued by youth running away, creating risks to themselves or to members of the community. Some facilities have recurring incidents in which youth are injured by restraints of staff, at times by staff not properly trained in how to physically stop a youth with minimum risk of harm. Some facilities are plagued by excessive incidents of residents assaulting each other, including sexual assaults. Former staff in many facilities complain that the pay is too low, the training inadequate, and the number of staff too few to keep up with the youth.
And the investigation turned up evidence that some facilities are slow to alert authorities to problems, or discourage their staff from giving full reports to state or law enforcement officials.