The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law

Embargoed for Release: Oct. 2, 2003 10:30 AM EST
Contact: Christopher Burley, Bazelon Center, 202-467-5730 x 133 or leec@bazelon.org

Bazelon Center Statement on The Keeping Families Together Act

Read a summary of the bill (PDF file)* Read the bill Senate version (S. 1704) House version (H.R. 3243) Staff Attorney Tammy Seltzer Testifies on Custody Relinquishment before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs (7/15/03) Bazelon Center Children's Issues Page *You will need the free Acrobat Reader to view and print this file.

Washington, DC—The following is a prepared statement by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law on introduction of the Keeping Families Together Act:

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law commends Senator Susan Collins and Representatives Patrick Kennedy and Pete Stark for recognizing the dire need to address barriers that prevent children with mental or emotional disorders from obtaining desperately needed services.

“The Keeping Families Together Act” represents an important step toward meeting the needs of these children and promotes an alternative to the closed doors and fragmented systems that too many parents face when they seek help for their children.

The crisis in children’s mental health is a national embarrassment. Literally millions of American kids are going without needed mental healthcare. Studies have shown that roughly 70 percent of children and adolescents in need of mental health services do not receive them.

When children with mental or emotional disorders cannot access the help they need, appalling—and entirely preventable—outcomes are the result. They, and their families, suffer through unnecessary crises, which can lead to school failure, traumatic out-of-home placements and—in some cases—arrest or suicide.

Families are torn apart as parents, unable to pay for services through private insurance or ineligible for services through the public mental health system, relinquish custody of their children to obtain state-funded services.

This week’s report by the Census Bureau that an increasing number of families have lost private insurance lends new urgency to our call for action. Lawmakers must act now to close the gaping holes in the nation’s safety net for children with mental or emotional disorders.

Not one family should feel they have to relinquish custody of their child to obtain needed mental health services. Yet thousands of mothers and fathers across the nation have surrendered their influence on key aspects of their children’s lives in order to access public mental health services for their children. In the process, too many children have been traumatized, often feeling abandoned by parents who only tried to act in their child’s best interests.

No single piece of legislation can solve this crisis, but “The Keeping Families Together Act” would lay a strong foundation for needed reforms by promoting access to needed services and reducing fragmentation in service delivery.

The bill would increase the availability of home- and community-based services and give states an incentive to continue to support such services. New York, Vermont and Kansas can attest to the wisdom of this approach. Each state has improved outcomes and reduced costs in its child mental health system since adopting a Medicaid waiver that helps fund home- and community-based services for children with mental health needs.

By promoting coordinated systems of care, this bill also recognizes the critical need to address fragmentation between the various agencies responsible for serving children—education, mental health, juvenile justice and child welfare. Collaboration between federal, state and local agencies is absolutely essential to getting kids the services they need and ending the practice of custody relinquishment.

Senator Collins and Representatives Kennedy and Stark are not alone in their efforts. Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX) have also championed bills to improve access to children’s mental health services.

We applaud these legislators for recognizing the need to act on behalf of children, so that not one more family is refused the mental health services their child needs and not one more child is left behind by the current fragmented and dysfunctional child mental health system.

The crisis in children’s mental health has been ignored for far too long. The time to act is now.

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The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law is the leading national legal advocate for people with mental disabilities. Through precedent-setting litigation and in the public policy arena, the Bazelon Center works to advance and preserve the rights of people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities.