Rights group questions children's care

New Hampshire Hospital

Rights group questions children's care
12-, 6-year-old kept with adults, teens

By ANNMARIE TIMMINS
Monitor staff


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December 16, 2009 - 12:00 am

The state hospital is temporarily housing its youngest mentally disabled students with adult and adolescent patients because there are too few kids to justify keeping them in their own quarters at the Anna Philbrook Center for Children, a hospital official said yesterday.

The decision prompted the Disability Rights Center to contact the New Hampshire Hospital yesterday with concerns about the children's well-being and care, said Richard Cohen, the DRC's executive director.

Philbrook is a school and therapeutic center on the state hospital grounds for kids between 4 and 14 years old who have moderate to severe mental disabilities. There is room for 25 kids, but yesterday there were just two, said Jamie Dall, director of financial and support services. One is 6 years old, the other about 12.

The hospital has a policy based on nursing standards, Dall said, to relocate the Philbrook kids to the other unit when enrollment falls below four students. That way, the staff typically assigned to Philbrook can be reassigned to other shifts in the hospital, he said.

This week, the two kids assigned to Philbrook have spent their days at the center, taking classes, meeting with their families and participating in counseling, Dall said. In the early evening, they go to the adolescent and adult unit of the hospital and remain there under close supervision until morning, he said.

When the hospital admits two more children, Philbrook will return to its normal schedule, Dall said. "There is no plan to close Philbrook," he added.

In the meantime, the Disability Rights Center has asked the hospital for the names of the children's parents or guardians to make sure the two kids there now are not being neglected or harmed by sharing space with adolescent and adult patients, Cohen said.

"We are concerned," he said. "We are looking to determine whether or not this is based on clinical needs or budgetary or administrative needs. This is unusual for Philbrook to be closed down. And it's very unusual for young children to be placed in an adolescent-adult unit at the hospital."

Dall said the hospital did not merge the young kids with the adolescent-adult unit to save money. The hospital still heats the Philbrook Center, and the staff still reports to work, Dall said. But there is a savings: With the young kids relocated for the evening, the hospital can use the Philbrook staff to fill shift vacancies elsewhere in the hospital, Dall said.

Children are admitted to the Philbrook Center voluntarily or by a court-ordered involuntary admission. And it's unusual for Philbrook to have so few students, Dall said.

Two weekends ago, there were 15 students at Philbrook. Last week, there were 11, he said. But at day's end on Friday, there was no one due to spend the night at the center, he said.

There was an attempted admission of a 6-year-old over the weekend, but due to "confusion," that admission did not happen, Dall said. He did not know the specifics. The parents of that child brought the child in Monday, and the child remained there as of yesterday, Dall said.

"As a general rule, we have to staff for the worst because we don't know who is going to come in at 2 or 3 in the morning," he said.

Dall said the two children who are spending the evenings and nights with the older patients are being kept at the far end of the adolescent wing, with close supervision.

The adolescent and adult wings are connected, but there is a nursing desk where they intersect, and the populations are kept apart, he said.

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