PROVIDENCE – Hospital stays stretching more than a year . Children being forced to live in locked residential facilities hours from their homes and loved ones. Parents unable to find behavioral health care services to keep their child at home and in their community.
These are among the allegations advocates leveled Wednesday in a class-action lawsuit against the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services; EOHH secretary Richard Charest; the state Department of Children Youth and Families; and its leader, Ashley Deckert.
The 68-page federal lawsuit brought by Disability Rights Rhode Island , the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island , and the New York advocacy group Children’s Rights is intended to force change after years of “glaring failures in Rhode Island’s behavior health system for children and youth.”
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of children on Medicaid ages 6 to 17, who they argue are languishing in an ill-equipped behavioral health system that fails to meet the needs of vulnerable children and their families. The lawsuit aims to get the state to address the dire state of the system, which they say fails to provide children and families with adequate services to keep their children at home and results in routine, lengthy institutionalizations.