Improving the Use of Psychotropic Medication for Children in Foster Care: State Profiles

Children in foster care, who typically rely on Medicaid to cover their physical and behavioral health service needs, are more likely than other children to receive psychotropic medications. In response, as part of federal legislation passed in 2012, states were newly required to develop protocols for the appropriate use and monitoring of psychotropic medications for children in foster care.


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Foster kids get antipsychotics at ‘new normal’ rate

Although fewer children in foster care and on Medicaid are getting prescriptions for antipsychotic medicines than during the early and mid-2000s, challenges remain.

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Drugging Our Kids: Foster care bill targets excessive prescribing of psychiatric drugs

The voices of foster youth and their advocates overcame the powerful physicians lobby in the Capitol on Monday, as a bill to identify and investigate California doctors who overprescribe psychiatric drugs to traumatized foster children won a key Senate vote.

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Too many Pa. foster children are on psychiatric meds

Following a report last summer that large numbers of Pennsylvania children on Medicaid, especially those in foster care, are taking psychiatric medications, state officials Tuesday announced steps to address the problem.

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The drugged children of foster care

The drugged children of foster care

A February, 2014 Wall Street Journal article, “Drugged as Children, Foster Care Alumni Speak Out,” examines the upsurge in strong antipsychotic drugs prescribed for children in Medicaid and foster care in the past decade and a half.  It should be required reading for every parent, teacher, counselor, caseworker, and judge who has or may have contact with the child welfare system.

Bay Area News Group wins global Online Journalism Award for 'Drugging Our Kids' series

The Bay Area News Group's "Drugging Our Kids" series, which revealed the excessive use of psychiatric drugs in California's foster care system, was named a winner at the 15th annual Online Journalism Awards on Saturday.

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By the time DeAngelo Cortijo was 14, he had been in more than a dozen foster homes. He had run away and lived on the streets for months, and he had been diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders, attachment disorder, intermittent explosive disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder. He had been in and out of mental hospitals and heavily medicated.

More >> California Moves To Stop Misuse Of Psychiatric Meds In Foster Care

The Drugging of Abused Children

Foster children, traumatized by abuse and/or neglect, are frequently prescribed psychiatric medications at a much higher rate and at much higher doses than children in the general population.  But psychiatric medication is not the treatment for trauma, psychotherapy is.

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New rules to protect foster kids from being drugged by physicians lacking

Proposed laws aimed at cracking down on the overuse of psychiatric medication in foster care require more from judges, lawyers, nurses, social workers, caregivers and state investigators to better protect children from potentially dangerous drugs.

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Why are so many foster kids taking psychiatric drugs?

California’s Legislature is poised to pass a law making it much harder to offer psychiatric medication to kids in foster care, responding to growing concern that foster kids get too many psychotropic medications.

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Drugging Our Kids: Documentary wins Murrow Award

"Drugging Our Kids," this newspaper's series about the excessive use of psychiatric drugs in California's foster care system, was honored Wednesday with an Edward R. Murrow Award for the country's best news documentary video by a large online organization.

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California reforms to cut use of foster care psych meds will cost millions

California will have to invest millions of dollars to better protect its 63,000 foster children from the excessive use of powerful psychiatric medications in a state where prescribing physicians, caregivers and the courts have long supported the drugging of as many as one in four foster teens.

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Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care, Poor Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics Get Them for Unaccepted Uses

The release in late March of an alarming new report by federal investigators has confirmed in shocking new detail what has been known for years: Poor and foster care kids covered by Medicaid are being prescribed too many dangerous antipsychotic drugs at young ages for far too long -- mostly without any medical justification at all. The report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General examined in depth nearly 700 claims filed in 2011 in five of the biggest prescribing states -- California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and New York -- and discovered that two thirds of all the prescribing with these popular and costly "second generation antipsychotics" (SGAs) raised high-risk "quality of care" concerns.


More >> Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care, Poor Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics Get Them for Unaccepted Uses

Drugging Foster Kids: Let’s Do Something About It

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.

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Foster care kids put on too many psych drugs, report says

Many children in foster care are being overmedicated with antipsychotic drugs they may not really need, or the drugs are being given incorrectly, according to a government review obtained by CBS News.

Foster care kids put on too many psych drugs, report says

The Drugging of Children in Foster Care

It's no secret that here in America, foster children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs, especially neuroleptics, as a means of controlling their behavior.  A great deal has been said and written on the matter.  Politicians have declared the practice deplorable.  Children's advocacy groups have expressed concern, and, of course, those of us in the antipsychiatry movement have screamed till we're hoarse.  But the problem persists.

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Why Foster Youth Are Overmedicated

An recent article in the Los Angeles Times addressed what some suggest is the over-medication of children in the Los Angeles County foster care system. Certainly this is a significant issue, and indeed, if children are being overmedicated, it must be addressed.

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Responding to reports of drugged foster youth, California lawmakers propose greater oversight

At a hearing Tuesday, California lawmakers will examine why the state's foster children are being prescribed psychiatric drugs at three times the rate of other youth.

More >> Responding to reports of drugged foster youth, California lawmakers propose greater oversight

More >> Hundreds more foster kids given drugs than first disclosed

Mercury News editorial: Foster kids need legal protection against over-drugging

A wave of legislation about to hit the California Legislature on the alarming pattern of over-drugging foster children will require careful navigating. But it's heartening that lawmakers are anxious to deal with the problems described in heartbreaking detail over the past year by the Bay Area News Group's Karen de S.

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Use of Medication On Foster Youth Investigated

Democratic Senator Jim Beall says nearly a quarter of adolescents in the California foster care system are being prescribed mood or behavior altering drugs. And he says it’s not clear who is in charge of tracking the medications foster children take.

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