Keeping Families Together bill re-introduced

Keeping Families Together bill re-introduced
(March 2009 Issue)

By Ami Albernaz

More than five years after she and co-sponsors originally introduced the bill, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), said she is planning to reintroduce the Keeping Families Together Act, which would increase services provided to families with children with psychological disorders.

A Government Accountability Office report in 2003 found that, in 2001, parents had placed more than 12,700 children into the child welfare or juvenile justice systems so that the children could receive mental health services. Only 18 states were included within the findings, suggesting the number of children placed outside of their homes was much greater.

The bill, originally co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of legislators including Senators Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), and Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), languished in Congress. Headlines from late last year of Nebraska parents abandoning older children under a safe-haven law because they were unable to cope with raising them has focused more attention on the issue.

"I hear lots of folks say custody relinquishment doesn't happen, but I believe it's still out there," says Carol Carothers, M.S., L.C.P.C., L.A.D.C., executive director of the Maine National Alliance on Mental Illness. "Some children have significant behavioral health issues, and their families are unable to obtain the help they need."

According to The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a Washington-based advocacy group for people with mental disabilities, around 70 percent of children and adolescents who need mental health services do not receive them.

Carothers adds that some families with more than one child who are having trouble obtaining services might relinquish the "healthy" children.

"There are many permutations," she says.

The act would give states $55 million a year for five years to support systems of care including community-based services, the Bangor Daily News reported. (Calls to Sen. Collins' office for information on the bill were not returned). The aim is for families to be able to obtain services for their children that they might not now be able to afford and to be able to care for children at home.

The bill would also establish a task force to explore improvements in mental health access and services in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

Small steps toward increasing services for children have been taken since the Keep Families Together Act was first introduced. In 2005, the Family Opportunity Act expanded Medicaid coverage to families of children with mental disabilities by relaxing income requirements. Under the act, some children at risk of residential center placement were able to receive community-based services.