Arizona Bill for Mental Health Treatment of Foster-Adopted Children

“Adoptive parents and their kids would get additional state help paying for mental-health treatment under a bill that won unanimous approval Tuesday in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Rick Murphy, R-Peoria, a foster and adoptive parent, would make children adopted through the state’s foster-care system automatically eligible for behavioral-health services, as they are while in foster care.

Murphy said the bill is needed because many parents who adopt children from state Child Protective Services don’t realize that their kids will need therapy. By the time they do, he said, it can be a lengthy, difficult process to get help.

“The vast majority of foster kids are going to need some kind of counseling at some point,” said Murphy, who has five adopted kids. “The intent of the bill is just to cut out some of the bureaucratic red tape.”

Nearly all parents who adopt Arizona foster children receive a monthly subsidy from the state equal to the amount they received before the kids were adopted. It averages about $750 a month and lasts until they turn 18.

Adopted children are eligible for the state’s Medicaid program, and kids with behavioral-health problems can receive treatment through the state system. Several hundred families qualify for respite care and other special services for their adopted kids.

But many families cover their adopted children through their own private insurance and most don’t request additional treatment funds. Murphy’s bill, offered as a strike-everything amendment to a different bill in committee, would ensure that all adopted children are eligible for mental-health treatment under the public system.

Arizona spent about $150 million on adoption subsidies and other payments to families during the last fiscal year, about half of it coming from the federal government.

It’s not clear how much Murphy’s bill would cost, and legislative analysts have not completed a fiscal analysis.

But Appropriations Committee Chairman Don Shooter, R-Yuma, said he was concerned about the potential cost and wanted the bill to be considered as part of the overall budget negotiations.

Adoptive parents sometimes struggle to get appropriate, consistent care for their deeply troubled children. Several have told The Republic that they’ve returned their children to CPS in hopes of getting them effective mental-health treatment. In some cases, CPS has opened neglect cases against those parents for abandoning their children.

Murphy said it can be hard to predict what kind of treatment a preschooler may need by the time he’s a teenager. The bill would reduce the time it takes to get help so problems don’t get out of control, he said, saving children and families additional trauma.

“By the time you fight through those hoops,” Murphy said, “you could be way down the road. It’s way more expensive and the problems are worse.”
Bill would give foster families money for mental-health care

[Arizona Central 2/26/13 by Mary K. Reinhardt/The Republic]

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