Recently updated on October 5th, 2024 at 11:44 am
A Mother Jones investigation exposed a troubled foster care system in Alaska—and the Fortune 500 company behind it.
Mother Jones did an excellent job with this investigation and reporting on it. It’s definitely not news that a state’s foster care system isn’t doing right by the kids in it. That was my first thought when Roe v Wade was overturned: We are now going to see a high rate of teen pregnancy and young people having their lives ruined by a forced pregnancy at very young ages, more kids will now be abused as people that didn’t want them are forced to have them and the anger and resentment is directed at them, and finally, more kids will now end up in the foster care system, which is already overwhelmed, and such a large number of adults that grew up in the system have mental health issues from their experiences.
Their life experiences can create additional problems resulting in mental illness, substance abuse problems, and a lack of confidence. These challenges impact the emotional and social development of foster care youth as they transition into adulthood.
Article on youth.gov
I’m not shocked to learn that Alaska was putting foster kids in a psych hospital for months or more when they didn’t have anywhere else to put them. I wish there could be a hard look at every state’s system followed by an overhaul to improve all of them.
Republicans say we need more people having kids in this country, but aren’t they forgetting about the number of unwanted children that already exist? Instead of forced birth, how about you improve the foster care system for the kids in it and then promote adoptions of children that were already born.
Remember when all of those Conservative women and couples were holding up signs saying “Give your baby to me!” or was it, “I’ll raise your baby?” Either way, why aren’t they adopting? 🤦♀️
Heres the reporting on Alaska’s foster care system putting kids in psych wards just because.
(Please click through to read the entire article on The Daily Beast website. I promote good work and if no one is visiting their site from here, it negates my purpose. Thanks. I appreciate you!😁)
It was 2018 when Mateo Jaime was admitted to North Star Behavioral Health, a psychiatric hospital in Anchorage, Alaska. He didn’t need acute psychiatric care, he says. Rather, Jaime was a teenager in the foster system, and Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services didn’t have a foster home for him. Jaime would spend two months at the facility, during which time he was held in seclusion and witnessed the forcible injection and physical restraint of other patients. He still has PTSD from the experience.
Jaime wasn’t alone. A yearlong Mother Jones investigation found that foster kids have been admitted hundreds of times to North Star, where some spend months or even years. Despite the facility’s troubling track record of assaults, escapes, and improper use of seclusion, state officials have admitted what foster youth have long suspected: Foster children are warehoused at North Star when there’s nowhere else for them to go.
Now, two bills introduced in the state legislature aim to reform psychiatric treatment for vulnerable youth in Alaska. Though neither bill mentions North Star by name, it looms large as the state’s only private psychiatric hospital for children.
HB 363 would require a court to review a foster child’s placement at a psychiatric hospital within 72 hours to determine if that child meets medical criteria for hospitalization. (There’s no statute on when an initial hearing should take place, though a preliminary injunction requires a hearing within 30 days.)
