Alaska officials sent 16-year-old Richard DeMaar 4,000 miles away from his parents to a psychiatric facility in San Antonio because his home state wasn’t equipped to handle his severe depression. Within six weeks, he had tied a makeshift noose around his neck, strangling himself to death. He’s one of roughly 900 out-of-state kids sent to residential treatment centers in Texas in the last five years, part of a national compact that allows states that don’t have adequate psychiatric services to send kids to states that do. But the practice has come under fire from children’s health advocates, who say it takes kids away from their families and their communities — two things they need to make a full-fledged recovery.
Health care
In-depth reporting on public health, healthcare policy, hospitals, and wellness issues shaping communities across Texas, from The Texas Tribune.
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Health care
Sacrificing Care?
For the past 16 years, the medical needs of Texas’ 160,000 prison inmates have been outsourced to the University of Texas Medical Branch and Texas Tech University, which have worked hard to provide care at the lowest possible cost. But with steep budget cuts and anticipated layoffs, critics contend the state could soon sacrifice the quality of that care — and could even face a legal challenge. Nathan Bernier of KUT News reports.
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Economy
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Ramshaw and the Houston Chronicle’s Terri Langford on incidents of abuse and mistreatment at residential treatment centers, M. Smith on the state Republican Party platform and 10th Amendment embracers, Galbraith on a pipeline project raising crude concerns and the most important word in water law, Ramsey on former officeholders who are now lobbyists and the possibility of a speaker’s race, Grissom on a fight over solar power in Marfa, Hamilton and Aguilar on the TxDOT audit, Philpott on budget cuts affecting school districts and my conversation with Dallas County D.A. Craig Watkins: The best of our best from June 7-11, 2010.
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Health care
TribBlog: Governor Responds to “Fight Club” Abuse
Gov. Rick Perry’s office said this evening that it has ordered the Department of Family and Protective Services to review its investigation and sanction policies in light of a Houston Chronicle/Texas Tribune article on staffers who forced young girls to fight at a Houston-area residential treatment center for foster children.
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Health care
TribBlog: Campaigns Sound Off Over ‘Fight Club’ [Updated]
The day after the Texas Tribune and the Houston Chronicle collaborated to expose a fight club — this one involving young girls at a Houston-area residential treatment center for foster kids — gubernatorial hopeful Bill White’s campaign sounded off on it, blaming Gov. Rick Perry for not being aware of the abuse.
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T-Squared
T-Squared: About the Tribune-Chronicle Partnership…
“On some wide-ranging stories, two news organizations are certainly better than one in pursing the truth,” Houston Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen says. We couldn’t agree more.
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Health care
Forced to Fight
Workers at a center for distressed children in Manvel provoked seven developmentally disabled girls into a fight of biting and bruising, while they laughed, cheered and promised the winners after-school snacks. The fight was one of more than 250 incidents of abuse and mistreatment in residential treatment centers over the last two years, based on a Houston Chronicle/Texas Tribune review of Department of Family and Protective Services records.
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Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Ramshaw on geriatric care in state prisons, with Miller’s photo essay inside those walls; M. Smith interviews the state’s newest Supreme Court justice, Debra Lehrmann; Aguilar finds fewer Mexicans seeking asylum in the U.S; Galbraith sorts out the politics of pollution and whether our air is dangerous to breathe; Thevenot discovers authorities writing tickets for misbehavior to elementary school kids; Philpott reports on early hearing about political redistricting; Kreighbaum examines fines levied against polluters and finds they’re often smaller than the economic benefits of the infractions; and Stiles and Babalola spotlight some of our data projects from our first seven months online: The best of our best from May 31 to June 4, 2010.
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Criminal Justice
The Brief: June 4, 2010
Physician-owned hospitals, which provide some of the best health care in the nation but have been in danger since health insurance reform passed, are taking their case to court.
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Criminal Justice
Dying on the State’s Dime
Texas’ “geriatric” inmates (55 and older) make up just 7.3 percent of Texas’ 160,000-offender prison population, but they account for nearly a third of the system’s hospital costs. Prison doctors routinely offer up the oldest and sickest of them for medical parole, a way to get those who are too incapacitated to be a public threat and have just months to live out of medical beds that Texas’ quickly aging prison population needs. They’ve recommended parole for 4,000 such inmates within the last decade. But the state parole board has only agreed in a quarter of these cases, leaving the others to die in prison — and on the state’s dime.