New Statistics for Behavioral and Mental Health Issues in Children
Data released today in Nebraska highlight four poorly-addressed issues that we continue to see in child welfare and adoption across the nation.
[Lincoln Journal Star 1/25/11 by Erin Anderson]
The first issue, confirmed again by this data, is that children with behavioral, emotional and psychological issues are more concentrated in out-of-home care situations. According to this latest study, ten percent of children have these issues in the general population of Nebraska yet twenty-six percent have these issues in foster care and sixty-five to seventy percent of the children in the juvenile justice system having these issues.
A second issue relates to the lack of mental health care options available, which affects both foster parents and adoptive parents. “Beth Baxter, administrator for Region 3 Behavioral Health Services in Kearney, said only one-quarter of children get the behavioral health care they need.” Part of the homestudy process is confirming that you have health care coverage, but rarely, if ever, do agencies ask or prospective parents look into the specific criteria to get mental health services, the quantity of visits a child would be eligible for, the types of care covered (counseling aspects generally are covered much less then medical/drug interventions) or how long coverage may last for the umpteen number of possible mental health issues that a child may have. Furthermore, it is rarely emphasized that most mental health providers do not have extensive experience with trauma-affected foster or adoptive children.
These critical mental health care availability realities that are OMITTED by homestudy and placing agencies end up mattering more in the long run than anything ADMITTED to by the agencies during the adoption process.
A third issue relates to who is actually seeing the children when they have these mental health issues and what percentage of health care is being taken up by mental health issues. This article gives some clues. “Nineteen percent of all pediatrician visits involve some type of psychosocial problem, making it the most chronic condition for pediatrician visits — more than asthma.” General pediatricians are seeing these problems and it is becoming the most chronic condition that they see!
A fourth issue is that biological, foster and adoptive parents often turn to placing their children into out-of-home care to get their mental health needs addressed. “[A] 2001 national survey of child welfare workers and juvenile justice officials in 19 states and 30 counties that found 12,700 children were in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems because it was the only way their parents felt they could get help for their behavioral and mental health needs.”
These issues are real and won’t be going away anytime soon. We as adoptive and foster parents need to first recognize this as an issue, seek to educate prospective parents to this reality, hold agencies accountable in their marketing and help open up mental health options to these families in need.
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