Foster Children on Medication Get Protections

Gov. Gray Davis has given final approval to a bill that requires unprecedented safeguards to protect abused children in the state’s care from receiving improper and unmonitored doses of psychiatric drugs.

The new law, which Davis approved Tuesday, also requires that social workers keep up-to-date medical and education records for the state’s 100,000 foster children.

State lawmakers enacted the legislation partly in response to a Times investigation in May 1998 that found that thousands of children in California’s group and foster homes are routinely given potent psychiatric drugs, at times simply to keep them docile for their overburdened caretakers. Those responsible for the children’s welfare often did not know who put the children on these behavior-altering medications or why, and sometimes were not even aware that the children were drugged.

Under the new law, juvenile court judges alone may approve psychiatric medication requests and children’s medication records must accompany them to each placement. In cases in which a child has been removed from a parent’s custody because of abuse or neglect, that parent may no longer consent to the use of such drugs.

“It was just plain bizarre to have parents who didn’t care or were abusive be in charge of approving psychiatric drugs for their children,” said Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), author of the bill. “This requirement is going to lead to better medical care for these kids. . . . It’s going to be harder to say, ‘We’re just going to give them a drug to calm them down.’ You’ve got to get a judge to approve that.”

The use of psychiatric medications on some of the state’s most vulnerable children was detailed as part of a series of stories looking at the plight of children taken from abused parents and placed under the state’s protection.

The Times found children who had been prescribed several types of psychiatric drugs at the same time, often in combinations and dosages that experts said were risky and could cause irreversible harm. Foster children as young as 3 were taking potentially dangerous psychiatric drugs to control “depression” or “rage.”

Bowen said the new legislation will require social workers to keep updated health and education records for every child. These records, also known as passports, must be provided to new foster parents within 30 days of a child’s initial placement in foster care and within 48 hours after a child is moved to a subsequent foster or group home. The updated records also must accompany every report submitted to the juvenile court.

The Legislature passed a law nine years ago requiring foster children to have such passports. But the state did not provide funds for the plan, so most counties never followed through.

Bowen said this time the counties have agreed to the requirement. Although there are no sanctions if social workers don’t keep up the passports, under the new law, the workers “have to answer in open court to a judge as to why they didn’t do it,” she said.

But the new law, while a step forward, still may leave children vulnerable to improper drugging. Though the measure now requires judges to sign off on requests to medicate children, many juvenile judges concede that they don’t know much about the medications or the doctors prescribing them. One judge said he simply must trust that the psychiatrist knows best.

Last year, Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court began requiring all such requests to be screened by the county’s mental health unit. But judges elsewhere said they lacked the money for such a review.

Bowen said the judges need to take the next step to ensure the children in their care are protected.

“If there really is a financial problem getting outside panels to review the medication requests, they should ask the Legislature for funding,” she said.