Three years ago, the state shifted the responsibility for – and cost of – decisions about residential placement and other intensive treatments for students with mental illness from the counties to the schools. The Legislature set aside $420 million a year to pay for a whole spectrum of education-related mental health services, including residential placements.
In the years since, parents of some of the state’s most emotionally disturbed young people say they are struggling, and often failing, to obtain services they believe will mean the difference between life and death for their children.
Since the new system went into effect, district placements of students in expensive, high-level residential facilities that specialize in treating emotionally disturbed children have dropped precipitously, according to a survey of more than a dozen of the state’s largest school districts.
[For more of this story, written by Jocelyn Weiner, go to http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2...y-ill-children.html?]
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