CCHR, a mental health industry watchdog, praises OIG report
highlighting states' failed oversight of foster children's treatment and calls for immediate action to address ongoing drugging concerns.

LOS ANGELES - July 8, 2024 - PRLog -- The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services delivered a critical report on the inadequate protection of foster care children in residential behavioral treatment centers. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR), which has long exposed the mistreatment and psychotropic drugging of foster children, commended the OIG report titled "Many States Lack Information To Monitor Maltreatment in Residential Facilities for Children in Foster Care."[1] CCHR emphasized the report's candid assessment of the poor state of oversight and stressed the urgency of implementing its recommendations to prevent the failures of past reform efforts.

The report says, "Policymakers, news media, and advocacy groups have raised concerns about the effectiveness of oversight efforts to protect children in these settings." It surveyed each state child welfare agency to determine how they monitor child maltreatment that occurs in residential facilities. This is because "States oversee residential facilities, and ACF [Administration for Children and Families] provides funding and oversight to States for children in foster care who meet certain eligibility requirements."

The OIG's findings show a failure to meet these requirements. Nearly one-third of states could not identify patterns of maltreatment in residential facilities within their state. States also had limited awareness of maltreatment that occurred across chains of residential facilities operating in multiple states.

Instances of abuse and neglect (collectively referred to as maltreatment) have been reported as occurring in residential facilities, including cases of physical violence, sexual assault, and improper restraints across nationwide chains of facilities.

CCHR filed Freedom of Information Act requests to each state asking for the numbers of Medicaid/Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) child beneficiaries who were drugged in 2023. To date, 28 states have responded, revealing that 2.3 million underprivileged children and teens ages 0-17 were prescribed psychiatric drugs under Medicaid at a cost of $1.4 billion.

Stimulants are the predominant class of psychiatric drugs prescribed to them, followed by anti-anxiety drugs for 0-5 year-olds, both of which are documented to cause addiction and other dangerous adverse effects.

In 2011, the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) found that foster children aged 0-17 in Medicaid were drugged at rates 2.7-4.5 times higher than were non-foster children in Medicaid. A sample of five states revealed the following percentages of foster children on psychotropic drugs:

• Massachusetts 39.1%
• Texas 32.2%.
• Florida 22%,
• Michigan 21%,
• Oregon 19.7%[2]

• Florida: 185,428 0-17 year-olds (at a cost of $178.45 million), of which 18,938 were 0-5 years old (with drug costs of $2.78 million)
• Michigan: 100,364 0-17 year-olds ($73.37 million), of which 6,839 were 0-5 ($2.27 million)
• Massachusetts 59,169 0-17 year-olds ($68.81 million) of which 1,890 were ages 0-5 ($557,827)