New Jersey Faulted on Its Juvenile Program
By Tina Kelly, New York Times, January 14, 2005
TRENTON, Jan. 13 -- New Jersey may not meet its own July 1 deadline for removing mentally ill young people from juvenile detention facilities because state officials are still trying to figure out how many there are and where to place them for treatment, Kevin Ryan, the state's child advocate, told an Assembly committee hearing on Thursday.
"That we don't know how many beds we need in the state of New Jersey assures that I'll be there on July 2 and children will still be in detention," Mr. Ryan said.
"The least we need to know is how many beds we need and what they cost, and what services we need and what they cost."
Mr. Ryan said that on any given day, there were at least 200 young people with serious mental health disorders who are illegally held in detention centers without adequate medical care while waiting to be placed in hospitals, group homes or foster care.
State officials say these youths can end up in detention facilities for the most minor of juvenile offenses, often because there is no other place to send them.
Mr. Ryan said many were held longer than children who committed serious crimes, violating what he called "a fundamental civil right for the children of New Jersey."
The state's child welfare reform plan calls for removing all children from detention who are waiting for mental health placements by July 1.
Kathi Way, deputy commissioner for the office of children's services in the Department of Human Services, told lawmakers that the state was making progress securing treatment for mentally ill youth.
She said the number of youth case managers had doubled, to 167. Since May, she said, 400 assessments of the needs of children in detention have been done or are in process.
Ms. Way said that hundreds of beds were still needed, but that the state had yet to determine exactly how many.
Mr. Ryan praised some of the state's recent efforts, including the State Juvenile Justice Commission's plans to standardize suicide screening and mental health screening in the state's 17 county detention centers this year.
"It will be a bold reform, and it will be a radical change," he told the Assembly panel, the Regulatory Oversight Committee.
In a November report on mentally ill children in detention centers, Mr. Ryan said there had been 90 suicide attempts or threats in just three detention centers
-- in Essex, Camden and Union Counties -- between January and August 2004.
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