Mother of Troubled Boy Complains He’s ‘Lost in System’

Rhonda is scared.

For the second time in as many months, her 9-year-old son, Patrick, who is deaf and emotionally disturbed, broke into the same Long Beach pawn shop this week, picked up a gun and waved it at passers-by. This time, according to police and store personnel, he entered the store by throwing a bicycle through the front window, causing an estimated $800 damage.

Police were able to subdue the red-haired, freckle-faced boy within minutes. But Rhonda worries about how the outcome might have been different. And she says that the incident, which took place just five days after Patrick was released from a facility contracted to provide mental health services by the county, is indicative of the callousness with which she and her son have been treated by a bureaucracy unable to accommodate them.

“I’m stuck in the cracks between the county and the state,” said the mother, an unemployed single parent who did not want her last name disclosed. “I just feel he’s lost in the system.”

County officials say that Rhonda checked Patrick out of the facility--Kedren Community Mental Health Center in Los Angeles--against medical advice. Rhonda, 27, disputes that, saying he was discharged as the result of a “misunderstanding.”

Whatever the truth, the boy’s problems have been plaguing him for quite some time. Deaf since the age of 2 because of an ear infection, he was until a year ago enrolled at a special state-run school for the deaf in Riverside County.

But Patrick began getting in trouble, Rhonda says, because of something later diagnosed as attention deficit disorder (ADD), a chemical imbalance in the brain characterized by hyperactivity.

So last September, when he set off false fire alarms, hit school staff members and broke into a campus vehicle, Patrick was suspended indefinitely. And life since then, she says, has consisted of a series of brief institutional stays punctuated by major calamities in which the boy has seriously jeopardized his own safety and the safety of others.

“He needs some help but we don’t have the money,” she said. And few county or state facilities, she said, are equipped to deal with the peculiar combination of problems presented by a 9-year-old deaf boy with ADD.

Social workers and mental health professionals say the problem consists more of a scarcity of beds than of services. “When there are beds, it isn’t difficult at all (to place a child like Patrick),” said John Griffith, assistant director of mental health services at Kedren.

According to Rhonda, there weren’t any beds on Monday when she called eight mental health institutions in an effort to get help for Patrick, who spent most of the day trying to climb out the window, throwing things about the house and destroying his room.

The next day was even worse: After crawling out a bathroom window at 10 a.m., he wound up hitchhiking on a nearby freeway on-ramp. After being apprehended an hour later by California Highway Patrol officers, Rhonda said, the boy was taken to a nearby state mental hospital, where he was given Ritalin, a mild stimulant of the central nervous system, and released.

On Wednesday, when she let him ride his bike while she watched, Rhonda said Patrick rode off to the pawn shop, which has an array of handcuffs and guns--police gear the boy long has been obsessed by.

“He’s always been fascinated by policemen,” Rhonda said.

Geri Curry, district chief for the county Department of Mental Health’s children and youth bureau, says the county expects to be able to admit Patrick as early as Monday to Napa State Hospital, which is equipped to deal with the special problems of deaf children, and hopes to find temporary facilities for the boy as soon as possible.

“We’re working very closely with the Probation Department to make sure that we have the teeth necessary to keep this child in placement once he’s placed,” Curry said.

Until then, said Rhonda, she plans to nail her windows shut.