Cafety

On Thursday, April 24, 2008, hearings were held on the issue of abuse and torture of youth in residential programs where 2 CAFETY members testified - CAFETY founder, Kathryn Whitehead and board member, Jon Martin-Crawford. The hearing held before the Committee on Education and Labor indicate a need for regulation, as the Government Accountability Office’s investigation found instances of widespread abuse and maltreatment and, in some instances, torture in facilities that have escaped regulation.  It was found that, as a direct consequence of a fragmented system where state monitoring and regulatory standards vary from state to state in both scope and reach, dehumanizing practices are being used, sometimes even integrated into the programs ‘therapeutic’ milieu.

Representative Miller introduced to the House HR5876 - Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2008.  This bill is designed to protect youth from disciplinary techniques that involve withholding food, water, clothing, shelter or medical care, physical and mechanical restraints that are inconsistent with the well-being of the child, acts of physical or mental abuse designed to humiliate, degrade, or undermine a child's self-respect.  The bill also provides for reasonable access to a telephone, the training of staff members as to the definitions of child abuse and how to report it, disclosure of staff qualifications and criminal; background checks for such staff, policies and procedures for emergency medical care and parental notification of changes in care, and notification of parents of violations of applicable laws and licensing standard.

CAFETY believes that it is the government’s responsibility to protect youths basic human right to dignity, respect, to least restrictive care, appropriate mental health treatment, to education and parental contact, to freedom of thought, of opinion and association, and ultimately to freedom from censorship and torture.  While some may object to the federal governments involvement in regulation and advocate instead for state regulation, we find that broad measure must be taken given the fluidity by which some program operators relocate after being shut down in one state and that often youth are not residents of the state in which the program operates, thus a parent often assumes a certain level of protection exists when in reality this is far from truth. To this end, we believe this piece of legislation to be an important step to assuring the protection of such rights.