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Advocacy Center News |
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The Advocacy Center’s (AC) work to improve outcomes for children in residential facilities is ongoing. Client advocates continue regular visits to many of the 52 facilities. These visits often uncover problems that can be addressed on the spot or with written complaints to the Office of Community Services (OCS), which licenses and inspects the facilities, or to OCS or Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) workers in charge of placing children there. In addition, three AC projects focus on these children. First, the AC continues to monitor the Department of Social Services’s (DSS) licensing and complaint inspections of the facilities. AC’s 2008 report, Out of Control: Louisiana’s Failure to Insure Health and Safety of Children in Residential Facilities (Out of Control: Louisiana's Failure to Insure Health and Safety of Children in Residential Facilities ), called attention to the need to strengthen licensing requirements and step up enforcement of existing requirements. Legislation was passed in 2009 that eliminated some of the major roadblocks to effective regulation. Several substandard facilities have been closed due to action by the DSS. New regulations will be implemented in January 2010. Second, AC is pursuing issues related to the education of children in these facilities. Many facilities have on-site schools, which are not meeting the educational needs of the residents. Even when children attend community schools, their rights are routinely violated. In the summer, AC filed a class complaint with the State Dept of Education (DOE) about one on-site schools – Christian Acres in Madison Parish. After an attempt to informally resolve the complaint failed, DOE initiated an investigation, the results of which are currently unknown. AC will file additional complaints and take further legal action, if necessary, to insure that the State complies with its duty to insure that children with disabilities in residential facilities receive a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. Finally, AC is trying to insure that all of the agencies responsible for these children – the DSS, the Dept of Health and Hospitals (including Medicaid and the Office of Behavioral Health), OJJ, and the DOE – collaborate to create a coordinated, consistent, statewide system of mental health care that will serve as an alternative to institutional placement for at-risk children. Recently, the four agencies announced that they were embarking on a new project to plan, design, develop and implement a coordinated system of care for at-risk youth. The project is on an ambitious schedule that calls for plans to be in place by the fall of 2010. |
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The Protection and Advocacy System for Louisiana ~ Serving People with Disabilities and Senior Citizens Advocacy Center |
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