Are local kids in foster care being overmedicated?
Records show hundreds of foster kids are taking pills like Ritalin or Welbutrin for anxiety or attention deficit disorder. But, some local advocates say these drugs are being used too much. And, sometimes they're employed just to keep the kids more manageable.
"It was hard. I am the baby of my family, so I am used to being around my brothers and sisters."
Precious Murphy was put into foster care 13 years ago at the age of seven. A year later, she was on a drug cocktail of three pills a day. "So right after they said I was hyper and couldn't sit down, maybe ADHD, so they put me on medications. I wasn't very active. I was always calm. I was a completely different person. How do you say drugged, kind of, because I was so little," she explained.
Today at age 20, Precious works with other former foster kids at Covenant Services, a religious non-profit that runs a coffee house in Oildale. They give kids from shattered backgrounds a scoop on a career.
All four of the former foster kids working the day we visited had been prescribed mind-altering psychotropic drugs.
"Three pills like three times a day, so that I could just like mellow out," said Keith Knight.
"Because I wasn't the legal age of 12 to make my own decision, they just said take it. And, I was kind of forced to take it," said Chris Schwartz.
Randy Martin is Covenant's CEO. "We don't want our children in care who have been removed and need help, to just be doped up to make it easy. Let's get them the help they need instead of numbing the situation down."
Martin says sometimes the medications are necessary. But, he knows of one 14-year-old foster kid where it was not. "That was on so many medications coming out of his group home, that he was literally incontinent. So not just having the problems going to school, fitting in, going school to school, but now if he's going on a camping trip or an overnight, he's wetting his bed."
Indeed, a multi-state study out of Tufts University in September 2010 seems to back up the worries. Researchers found psychotropic medication use has increased two to three-fold in foster youth over the last decade. And, that use of the medications among foster kids is at least three times higher than the general population.
It's such a concern that advocates like Colleen McGauley say a local study is in order. "We have kids on these medications, just at a glance, that are not getting mental health treatment."
McGauley is the Executive Director of Kern CASA, a group of volunteers who serve as advocates for foster kids in court. She says 70 of the foster kids in her program are on some form of behavioral drug, roughly 40%.
"Here I am just an advocate for children, but making me behave when I have lost everything that's important to me is not going to fix that I've lost everything important to me," said McGauley.
Dignity Health just awarded CASA a $40,000 grant to take a closer look at all 70 case files.
"We've put this grant together to try to affect systemic change if it's needed. I believe that we do have some children that are quickly moved to medication and a diagnosis of ADHD when it may not be the diagnosis that they need," said McGauley.
But, Child Protective Service's Antanette Jones points out the CASA program takes in foster kids who are high-need. "That wouldn't be surprising to me because CASAs would not be assigned to kids who are not having problems," she said.
And, Jones points to statistics that show about 10% of Kern's foster kids were prescribed psychotropic drugs in the most recently reported quarter. That's compared to about 13% of foster kids on the drugs statewide.
"We have a lot more physical abuse cases than in the past. We have a lot more incidences of domestic violence that is occurring within the home."
Back at Covenant Coffee, former foster kid Precious says she weaned herself off the prescription drugs when she turned 18. "I am able to control myself. It's not all medicine. I know when I want to be happy, I know when I want to be sad. With medicine, I am always sad because I don't have any other feelings because I am so drugged up."
The study with the CASA kids could take months to complete, but that information will be shared with other organizations in the foster care system when it's done.
