Drug Laws Violated for Foster Kids

Drug Laws Violated for Foster Kids : Deeper Concerns

In the wake of a little boy's suicide and the admission by child welfare chiefs that they violated a 2005 law aimed at protecting kids from psychiatric-drug use, some Florida lawmakers suggest the death may be a symptom of deeper problems.


The 2005 law came about when Florida lawmakers became concerned that kids in foster care were being needlessly medicated to control "difficult" behavior.

On April 27, Sen. Ronda Storms, who chairs the Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee, wrote to DCF Secretary George Sheldon, ''This case raises serious concerns which demand attention and answers,'' Among the questions, she asked was, ``To what degree, if any, has the [department] ignored or circumvented . . . the 2005 law which curbed the use of psychotropic drugs in the treatment of our children in department care?''

A former lawmaker who authored the 2005 legislation, Walter G. ''Skip'' Campbell, who also chaired the children's committee, accused the DCF of ''cooking the numbers'' so as to make it look as if had curbed the use of mental health drugs to "manage" the behavior of unruly children.

In a report last September to the Florida Senate, the DCF claimed that less than 7percent (2,307!) foster kids were on such drugs. It also claimed that in almost all cases the agency had "received proper consent". But that report was based on figures from the DCF's internal database (known as the Florida Safe Families Network, or FSFN) long acknowledged by administrators to be unreliable.

In a memo as long ago as September 2006, the DCF's then-director of family safety, Patricia Badland, said DCF's computer system recorded that only 4 percent of children in the state's care were being given psychotropic drugs -- while a separate system kept by Medicaid said nearly 12 percent - three times as many - of foster children were on psychotropic medications...more