Drugging Foster Kids: Let’s Do Something About It

This is an invitation to action.

Mad in America readers know that psychotropic medications, especially “antipsychotics,” often are used to sedate and restrain problematic people, including children—and not just any children, but foster children especially, and most of all, foster children in so-called “group homes.”

Agreement is widespread that foster kids are over-medicated: too many, too young, too many drugs per child, on dosages that are too high and are maintained too long, often for years on end.

The PsychDrugs Action Campaign of the National Center for Youth Law invites Mad in America readers to join us to make positive changes now.

Why Foster Children?

Foster children are a lucrative market for psychotropic drug sales. Unlike adults, they can’t say “no, I won’t take any more of that drug.” Unlike children living with parents, their parents cannot say “I don’t like what that drug is doing.” Responsibility for prescribing is diffused confusingly among foster parents, caseworkers, child welfare supervisors, group home administrators, and prescribers. All are involved, but their roles in medication decisions are overlapping and ill-defined. It is easy for each to say, “it wasn’t my decision.

One of the consequences is that in some states about half of children in group homes are medicated with psychotropic drugs. Many foster children are dozing through their childhoods and teenage years in a semi-sedated haze, a haze that is profitable for the drug industry and convenient for administrators, staff, and foster parents who prefer to minimize demands on their time and attention.   The losers are the kids. A dozen years in a chemical straitjacket is no preparation for adult independence.

But Mad in America readers already know that.

What We Are Doing About It

Since 2012, we have been working to educate the public and, especially, to educate the responsible California state agencies, the Department of Health Care Services, which authorizes payment for the drugs, and the Department of Social Services, which oversees the county agencies that are the “parents” of foster children. We hope the state agencies will take action, but we are not waiting on them. We are asking the California legislature to act by passing four bills in the current session, Senate Bills 238, 253, 319, and 484.

What About You?

This is where you, a Mad in America reader, enter the picture.   Legislators don’t have time to become experts on most of the proposals that they enact or discard. To a substantial extent, they count on interest groups to make the case for or against each proposal. The pharmaceutical industry, the congregate care industry, and organized medicine have well-paid lobbyists. They will make sure that the voice of the status quo is heard in the legislature’s corridors and offices. As a Mad in America reader, you can make yourself heard, too.

Let us help you to be heard. Send an e-mail to: [email protected]

Put “psychdrugs action campaign” in the header or the message box. We will reply with recommendations for concerted action that will require a minimum of your time for maximum potential effect.