Mr. Chairman, I don’t doubt that medication can be an appropriate component in a treatment plan to help children with mental health or behavioral problems. But instead of being one option in a broader treatment plan, psychotropic drugs too often seem to be the first and only treatment for children in our foster care system.
According to the Congressional Research Service, close to 40% of children in longer term foster care who were over the age of six were using psychotropic medicines in 2010. That’s a staggering level of children receiving mind altering drugs.
Other studies have found that among children enrolled in Medicaid in 2011, children in foster care were prescribed psychotropic medications at rates from 3 to 11 times higher than non-foster children.
Having been abused or neglected and then removed from their homes, every child coming into the foster care system has suffered some degree of trauma. We have heard first hand from some former foster children that this trauma led them to act in irresponsible or even dangerous ways.
We can’t just give these kids a pill, or four or five pills in too many cases, and call it a day. These children need and deserve specific, evidence-based interventions to help them, in addition to a caring and nurturing home.
This issue is not new to this Committee. In 2008, under the leadership of then-Chairman McDermott, we required states to develop health oversight plans for children in foster care, including the oversight of prescription medicines. In 2011, Congress strengthened that provision to require specific protocols for reviewing the prescribing of psychotropic medications to foster children.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on how child welfare and Medicaid policies have changed in response to these laws. My home state of Texas has taken a number of steps in recent years to prevent the unnecessary overmedication of children in foster care, including the passage of legislation last year to ensure a greater role for guardian ad litems in the oversight of a foster child’s medications.
Court Appointed Special Advocates or CASAs can play a vital role in helping foster children, and I applaud the Texas CASA Association for working towards this new law’s passage.
Improved oversight of psychotropic medications is only part of the solution. Children in foster care need access to comprehensive treatment for their mental and emotional health needs, which requires additional efforts in both the Medicaid program and the child welfare system.
The Administration’s budget calls for $750 million over the next five years toward this goal. This investment is equal to about a quarter of one percent of the cost of one of the tax breaks approved just a few hours ago by the Ways & Means Committee.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter from over one hundred child advocacy organizations urging support for the Administration’s budget proposal to reduce the over medication of foster children through a new demonstration project involving both child welfare and Medicaid agencies. I see Dr. Phil’s foundation is one of the many organizations that signed this letter.
The question is not whether there is support within Congress to remedy the problem of overmedication among foster children, the question is whether we will take action. And there is a real question as to whether this Congress will move beyond talk and take the action necessary to correct this problem.
Investing in the welfare of children in foster care is not only the right thing to do, it is the financially prudent thing to do. We can pay for success now, or we can pay much higher bills for failure in the future. All of us are parents for children in foster care, and we need to work harder to meet that responsibility. Thank you.
