NH-Lawyer: Client needs his medication in jail

Lawyer: Client needs his medication in jail | New Hampshire NEWS03:

Note: Mr. Daley isn't the first person to not receive his prescribed medication in Valley St. and he won't be the last. And he won't be the only person going before the court shaking and not in his right mind. Other's before him have plead out to charges when they shouldn't have, unaware of what they were doing. Valley St. is known for holding back prescribed medication, even when family member's fill the prescriptions and deliver them to the infirmary themselves at no cost to the state. The prisoner's are still refused their medication.These people are SUPPOSED to be considered innocent before guilt is proven or not proven, yet they aren't even allowed prescribed medication. How can anyone plead guilty or innocent when they can't even think straight? This practice has been going on at Valley St. for years and I doubt it will stop any time soon just because one prisoner has a Lawyer speaking up for him. Even the Judges won't step in. Could this be the reason so many die at Valley St.?


MERRIMACK — A local man who was in court on Tuesday facing an attempted murder charge has not received his medication since his incarceration last week, according to the man's attorney. 


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Juvenile Seeks to Rein in CPS Abuses through Legislation

Sacramento Press / Juvenile Seeks to Rein in CPS Abuses through Legislation:

Now that Eric Smith, (not real name) a 17-year-old foster child, has been declared a dependent of the court, he is on a mission to change the laws that regulate CPS. “No one should have to go through what I did,” he said, citing his nine months in CPS custody last year. “They treated me like I was a villain, instead of a victim. Why? Because they can.” Eric wants to see that stop.


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Rand Paul on the Life at Conception Act

National Pro-Life Alliance:

Working With the Courts in Child Protection-User Manual

Working With the Courts in Child Protection-User Manual

Child Abuse and Neglect User Manual Series


ACF Manual for families which states how CPS and the Family Court's are SUPPOSED to practice, but don't!

Home. Stronger, Together

Home. Stronger, Together. - RWJF:

Keeping children with their families and out of foster care

Thanks to a new approach to stabilizing fragile families involved with the child welfare system, a 13-year-old and her father get the integrated services they need through supportive housing to stay together as a family.

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New $35 Million Public-Private Initiative Seeks To Stabilize Highest Risk Families

New $35 Million Public-Private Initiative Seeks To Stabilize Highest Risk Families - RWJF:

Replication Effort Pairs Supportive Housing and Social Services to Strengthen Fragile Families, Avert Foster Care Placements

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has partnered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and three private foundations to jointly fund a $35 million initiative to further test how supportive housing can help stabilize highly vulnerable families and keep children out of the foster care system.

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Medicating kids in foster care: Turns out that’s arbitrary, capricious and cruel, too

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog: Medicating kids in foster care: Turns out that’s arbitrary, capricious and cruel, too:

 The study, from PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, compared data on the use of “second generation antipsychotics” on foster children in 47 states and the District of Columbia between 2002 and 2007.  These drugs have become notorious in child welfare circles because, to use the genteel words of the study

these drugs are prescribed to address disruptive behaviors in children despite limited efficacy data and emerging evidence of metabolic side effects that have questioned their use in pediatric populations.

            In other words, their primary purpose often is to keep foster children doped up and docile for overloaded caretakers – notwithstanding the grave risks the drugs may pose to the children.

GRANDMA VS. THE RX PAD

Unfortunately, the researchers failed to draw one distinction which might explain part of the discrepancy.  The study does not compare the use of meds based on where a child is placed. 

It turns out that once a child is in foster care, the best protection against needless medication is – grandma.

Note:  As grandparent's to Austin Knightly, my husband and I were told by Lorraine Bartlett of NH DCYF that we could NOT have custody of our grandson because DCYF believed we would stop medicating our grandson with the psychotropic drugs DCYF put him on. Drug's he was prescribed for his new found violent behavior since his illegal kidnapping by NH DCYF. Violent behavior he NEVER experienced until DCYF forcefully removed him from his grandparents home.

As has been noted previously on this blog, when Florida started looking closely at the problem, the state found that, when foster children are institutionalized, 26 percent of them are medicated. When they're placed with strangers, it's 21 percent. But when foster children are placed in kinship care with extended family, usually a grandparent, only four percent are prescribed psychiatric meds.

It's not hard to figure out why: Grandparents and other relatives are more likely to love these children, and so will tolerate more difficult behavior before demanding a prescription. That's just one indication that the best solution to the misuse and overuse of meds on foster children is not a new law – it's grandma; or, better yet, keeping more children out of the system in the first place.
   

 It would have been helpful had the researchers broken down the medication rates  for each state by placement type, if such data were available.

            It also would have been helpful had the researchers thought more about the implications of their own findings.  The only solution they can think of is throwing more therapy and counseling at foster children.  But the fact that kinship caregivers, who typically get less help than what should properly be called “stranger-care parents,” still resort to drugs so much less often suggests another possibility.  The researchers need to consider whether, for many of these children, it’s foster care itself that’s causing their problems, and return to their own homes or, at least, placement with a relative, might be the best therapy of all.

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