Cafety

CAFETY takes the position that to counteract the ability of parents to buy their way out of the due process that the state affords their children, it is imperative that legislation be passed to both outlaw private escort services and to create an independent third party screening agency for admission into any residential program that doesn’t have one already.  Parents simply should not have the right to send their children to a residential program just because they think their kid needs it. A qualified, impartial third party should be mandated to ensure that youth who do not require the residential level of care receive treatment in the least restrictive environment as is required by law.
 

Part of the growth of the unregulated residential treatment industry is likely in part to the tightening of state regulations when it comes to placing youth in residential treatment that is paid for by the state. Whether as a result for an appreciation of youth rights or as an effort to trim state budgets, many states have made it more difficult for parents to sign their “out-of-control” youth to a residential program without the youth going through a rigorous screening process first.

In New York State, for instance, a parent can send their youth to a residential program any one of four ways: through the court (OCFS placements), through the educational system (SED/VESID placements), through the mental health system (OMH RTF), or through their own pocketbook (any).

While the level of scrutiny given to each request for placement varies from municipality to municipality, and from school district to school district, some form of due process exists. Anecdotally, it appears that municipalities or school districts who can afford to send their “troubled kids” away are the ones that more often do.

While this in itself is a problem that needs to be corrected, the greater concern are the unregulated facilities where if parents are willing to pay, the program is willing to take the youth, often times without ever having the opportunity to meet the youth in person. In fact, with many unregulated residential programs, the first time a youth knows they’re even going to the program is when the escorts arrive to pick them up.

When parents are unable to unwilling to transport their own children to private facilities, there are for-profit transportation services that they can call to escort their children to certain facilities. In the most horrific examples, several men have come in the middle of the night to take a youth from their bed and physically drag them to a vehicle where they are then transported thousands of miles away to their eventual destination. In these instances “escort services” are nothing more than hired kidnappings.