Department of Justice sues Maine for treatment of children with behavioral health disabilities
Maine is unnecessarily separating children with behavioral disorders into hospitals, residential facilities and a state-run juvenile detention center, the U.S. Justice Department said Monday in a lawsuit seeking to force the state to make changes.
Federal investigators say the actions violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead ruling, which was intended to ensure that people with disabilities were not unnecessarily isolated while receiving government assistance.
The Ministry of Justice Maine informed of his findings of civil rights violations in a June 2022 letter, noting what the commission described as a lack of adequate community-based services that would allow the children to remain in their homes.
At the time, the department recommended that Maine use more state resources to maintain a pool of community-based service providers. It also recommended that Maine implement a policy requiring providers to serve eligible children and prohibiting denial of service.
“The state of Maine has a duty to protect its citizens, including children with behavioral health disorders, and such children should not be confined in institutions far removed from their families and community services,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
The governor and Legislature have been working to strengthen behavioral health services for children, said Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services. DHHS has also been working with the Justice Department to address the first allegations in 2022, she said.
“We are deeply disappointed that the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to sue the state instead of continuing our concerted, sincere effort to strengthen the delivery of behavioral health services for children,” Hammes said. “The state of Maine will vigorously defend itself.”
In 2022, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said improving behavioral health services for children in Maine was one of her goals. Her administration also said the state’s behavioral health system had years of deficiencies and that the COVID-19 pandemic was holding back progress.
Advocates welcomed the lawsuit, noting that 25 years after the Olmstead ruling, children in Maine and their families are still waiting for the state to comply with the ruling.
“Despite more than a decade of calls to ensure the availability of those services, Maine has failed to do so. Unfortunately, this lawsuit was the necessary result of that continued failure,” said Atlee Reilly, managing attorney for Disability Rights Maine.
According to the researchers, the ADA and Olmstead ruling require state and local governments to ensure that the services they provide to children with disabilities are available in settings that best meet each child’s needs.
Services may include assistance with activities of daily living, behavior management, and individual or family therapy. Community-based behavioral health services also include crisis services that can help prevent a child from being institutionalized during a mental health crisis.
The lawsuit alleges that Maine manages its system in a way that limits mental health care in the community.
As a result, in order to receive behavioral health services, Maine children must go to facilities including the state-run juvenile detention center, Long Creek Youth Development Center. Others are at high risk of entering these facilities because their families struggle to keep them in their homes despite the lack of necessary services.
The future of Long Creek has been the subject of much debate in recent years. In 2021, Mills a bill vetoed to close the facility last year.