Youth Mental Health, Well-Being, and Healing Must Continue to Be a Priority: 2024 Budget Recap
August 12, 2024
This post was written by Voices’ Batten MPP intern, Mikayla Havison.
In June, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee released a report on the conditions of youth residential treatment facilities (RTFs)—they titled it “Warehouses of Neglect.” Tragically, Virginia is one of the most frequently mentioned states in the report.
The report confirmed suspicion that RTFs have failed at their original purpose of diverting young people with mental health needs from punitive spaces. RTFs promised therapeutic spaces for youth but have evolved into abuse centers for Virginia’s most vulnerable young people. Some of these young people are part of the child welfare system, have significant trauma, and live with disabilities and mental health diagnoses. These young people deserve support, but RTFs have proven they cannot be trusted to provide it.
The Senate’s investigation revealed physical and sexual abuse by staff, youth-on-youth harm, medical negligence, human rights violations in living conditions, failure to report serious incidents, preventable deaths of young people, and more. Some of the most gut-wrenching stories include:
We need to take collective action for the youth currently in and who may be sent to RTFs in the future.
For Legislators: In the 2025 General Assembly session, legislation regarding RTF conditions must be a priority. During the 2024 legislative session, HB317 passed unanimously, allowing the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman to interview young people in foster care about their experiences in RTFs. HB317 is important legislation, but RTFs need more than oversight. Many of the incidents mentioned by the Senate were reported to authorities, yet these warehouses disguised as mental health facilities seem to operate as usual. Given the severity of RTFs’ legal violations, legislators should fund and support alternatives to RTFs like in-home care, intensive care coordination, mobile crisis response, and other programs proven to be more effective and cost-saving in Virginia.
For the Court System: The report explicitly states that judges in the juvenile and domestic relations court system should seek education on the current dangers of RTFs. Even if a specific RTF is not in the report, this does not mean young people will be safe or find healing in that space. For now, the courts must view RTFs with extreme skepticism. The Virginia Department of Social Services must also abide by education and avoidance when choosing where to place young people involved in the child welfare system.
For the Media: Media outlets have only published a few stories on the US Senate’s report and the ongoing state of RTFs. Journalists are best suited to continue the investigation and hold RTFs accountable.
For Fellow Advocates: We must prioritize young people in RTFs in our work. RTFs in Virginia have gotten away with heinous crimes because they are forgotten as a policy issue. We cannot forget and write off residents in these facilities as “troubled teens.” When we talk about youth mental health and child welfare, we must include RTFs in the conversation by engaging young people with lived experience.
Harbor Point Behavioral Health (HPBH) reports on its website that the center “treats residents who have experienced significant trauma” and that they are “committed to service excellence, teamwork, compassion, and ethical and fair treatment for all.” Ironically, this is the same facility where the living conditions are human rights violations, staff physically and verbally abuse children, plans for treatment are not reevaluated, and medications are incorrect/mislabeled. Would it not be amazing if HPBH and other RTFs lived up to their claims of being centers of care?
Although RTFs like HPBH cannot be trusted now, their vision for supporting young people with trauma is something we can aspire to. RTFs should be used as a valuable last resort, as noted by Mental Health America , but we cannot do that until they are healing centered. To achieve this goal, we must all continue to watch RTFs, respond to failures, and support the mental health of young people through better alternatives. I believe that if we act together, RTFs will no longer be “warehouses of neglect”—they can become centers of healing for the young people who need them most.
Mikayla Havison (she/her/hers) is a Master of Public Policy (MPP) student at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia (UVA). Her policy areas of interest are child advocacy and juvenile justice.
August 12, 2024
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