Adolescents who enter state custody concurrently with a psychiatric hospitalization

Theodore P. Cross, Shufen Wang, Steve P. Tran and Yu-Ling Chiu

Children and Youth Services Review, 2024, vol. 163, issue C

Abstract: Some youth enter state custody concurrently with a psychiatric hospitalization. This can happen when youth have serious emotional disturbances and parents or guardians relinquish custody in order to pay for inpatient psychiatric care. We studied a population of 521 adolescents who entered state custody through the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (IDCFS) concurrently with a psychiatric hospitalization between our study period from July 2018 to March 2023, and compared them to populations entering state custody in that time period through medical hospitalization and conventional placements. A large majority (79.5 %) of those in the psychiatric hospitalization group entered custody without a finding of parental abuse or neglect or because parents locked out the child, an action some parents take to force the state to take custody Their median length of stay of 56 days suggests that many youth stayed beyond medical necessity. Almost two-thirds went from the psychiatric hospital to a group home or residential treatment center. We discuss how such use of psychiatric hospitalization and congregate care contrasts with policy emphasizing serving youth in the least restrictive setting.

Keywords: Adolescents; Child welfare; Custody; Psychiatric hospitalization; Custody relinquishment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740924002871
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:163:y:2024:i:c:s0190740924002871

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2024.107715

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().