Why Aren't the Kids Home Yet
Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary meeting we dug into a report by the US Department of Justice outlining the ways Alaska is failing children with mental and behavioral health issues—to the point of violating their rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
We just don't serve these kids where they live. And too often we don't help them in culturally appropriate ways. Because the services they need often don't exist, even in hub communities, children end up getting hospitalized at state facilities in Anchorage, or worse, being sent as far Outside as Texas and Missouri to specialized treatment facilities. Even when the children do come home, the support services they need aren't there, so they too often go back.
We have to do better. One of the DOJ's killer conclusions said "the needs of children with behavioral health disabilities in Alaska who receive services in institutions are not materially different from those of other children who are thriving in community-based settings in other states." Translated, that means we put kids behind locked doors, away from their families, who do not need to be there.
A panel of brass from Alaska's Departments of Health and of Family & Community Services brought us up to date on their efforts to do better. I'm pleased to say there were very few excuses and a lot of talk about how to make progress.
Unfortunately, it's not a new problem. We've been talking about it at least since the 1990s. In fact, most of the steps they talked about were part of the Bring the Kids Home effort from roughly 2004-2014. That effort got us to where we are today. It reduced the number of children in Outside facilities from about 750 at a time to just under 200. And it pushed services in the child's own home and community.
But it hasn't put crisis intervention and stabilization services in rural Alaska. Nor has it built services for Alaska Native children that don't separate them from their culture. For privacy reasons the report can only give cold, sanitized versions of what happens to those kids—devoid of detail. It still made me cry more than once.
Alaska kids deserve better. They have federal rights to better. Since the state closed the old Harborview Institution in Valdez in the 1990s we've been promising to treat children's mental health and behavioral health needs in their homes and communities so they can live their best, fullest lives and get the best medical outcomes. We're not there yet. Last week's hearing was just the start of our work.
