U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing residential treatment stays for vulnerable children at which they are often at heightened risk of suffering overmedication, the use of physical restraints, and sexual and emotional abuse, according to a U.S. Senate report released Wednesday.
The report by the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions was drafted after widespread allegations of abuse and neglect at residential treatment facilities operated by four private companies, including a case in which a 9-year-old girl in Oregon’s foster care program was drugged and another in which a 16-year-old child was restrained so long he suffocated to death. His only offense? Throwing a sandwich.
The report noted that some of the country’s largest behavioral health companies are running treatment centers in which there is little oversight and a culture that prioritizes profits over the well-being and safety of children.
Oregon U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, noted the report had “shocking details about the treatment of kids in these facilities,” which get public money from programs like Medicaid and the state’s child welfare systems.
“And unfortunately, it seems that more often than not, abuse and neglect is the norm at these facilities, and they’re set up to let this happen,” Wyden said, noting his staff spent two years looking into treatment facilities.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., listens during a news conference with survivors of abused and neglected youth at residential treatment facilities and advocates, on the need for Congress to act to protect children and reform the facilities, Wednesday, June 12, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington. “It is outrageous and heartbreaking that so many vulnerable children experience neglect and abuse within our foster care system,” Wyden said.
Mariam Zuhaib / AP
They focused on four companies: Universal Health Services, Acadia Healthcare, Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health and Vivant Behavioral Healthcare. Wyden said his staff reviewed thousands of documents, spoke to experts, read news articles and visited facilities.
The report said congressional staff found “rampant civil rights violations” and that providers relied heavily on placing children in seclusion or chemically restraining them, basically injecting them with medicine to sedate them. The facilities are often understaffed and pay low wages to the employees, yet they often receive more than $1,200 per day, per child from the federal Medicaid program.
State Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, joined Wyden at a press conference in Washington, D.C., before the finance committee delved into details of the report at a hearing.
The report, she said, “validates what youth and survivors have been telling us not for weeks or months or years but for decades.”
“My hope is this is the first step in people saying enough,” Gelser Blouin said. “Enough spending our money to abuse children. Enough sending kids to places just to warehouse them. Enough holding kids to the ground and silencing them both literally and figuratively. And enough telling these kids and survivors they are making it up and more importantly telling them they deserved it.”
OPB first chronicled tales of abuse and neglect of vulnerable children placed in Oregon foster care at facilities owned by Sequel Youth and Family Services in 2019. Later, the company garnered national attention amid reports from across the country of children being mistreated at private facilities. That company has since closed many facilities and sold much of its assets to another business, Vivant Behavioral Healthcare. However, the founder of Sequel Youth and Family Services, Jay Ripley, is now the CEO of Vivant Behavioral Healthcare.
Starting in 2018, child welfare officials in Oregon increasingly relied on out-of-state facilities to house children placed in foster care. Initially, child welfare officials kept their decision to send more children to other states largely under wraps. They didn’t alert lawmakers to the arrangement, and when OPB broke the news in February 2019, state administrators declined to disclose where they were sending the children or what kind of oversight was offered once the children, some as young as 9, were sent thousands of miles away.
A litany of disturbing stories and reports of widespread abuse and use of restraints at such centers surfaced.
In June 2020, two Oregon teenagers were removed from a Michigan treatment facility after state officials learned another child restrained by staff for throwing a sandwich died. At that time, Oregon officials said they would stop sending kids to treatment facilities in other states.