Children in state custody stuck living in Massachusetts hospitals

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    BOSTON (WCVB) — Meghan and Adam Andrew watched in frustration and anger as their 12-year-old foster child remained stuck in a Massachusetts hospital, eating poorly, barely moving, no school and no friends.

“It’s devastating,” Meghan Andrew said. “You watch them wither away in that bed.”

The Andrews are foster parents to four siblings, all with challenges from their early years of trauma. During one crisis in January 2021, the Andrews called an ambulance after one child, who has a mood disorder, PTSD and anxiety, reached a crisis point.

In the hospital, it didn’t take long for the worst to pass.

The child was ready to be discharged, but the Andrews made the difficult decision to ask Massachusetts Department of Children and Families to find a therapeutic school or group home until their child was safe to return to a home environment.

But DCF couldn’t, or wouldn’t, so the child lived in the hospital for 51 days.

“Sleep till whenever, wake up, eat whatever they felt like eating and watch TV all day,” Meghan Andrew said. “When we asked for our child … to have a walk outside or even physical therapy, we were told ‘no.'”

They are not alone.

The group representing hospitals around the state says the institutions are being forced to house children in state custody who should be discharged but have no place to go.

One month last year, there were 69 children in state custody living in hospitals for no medical reason, according to a survey by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association and the Massachusetts Association of Behavioral Health Systems.

The vast majority of children of those children — 83 percent — were DCF’s responsibility. according to the survey.

At Boston Children’s Hospital, social work manager Asha Kiirikki, and Amara Anosike, director of behavioral health policy, have seen the problem firsthand. When we spoke, one patient had been there for more than 100 days.

“Unfortunately, the kids that are most vulnerable tend to wait for the longest periods of time,” said Anosike, who, since giving the interview, has left Children’s Hospital for another job.

“We do our assessment, clear them and then try to send them back to the group home. But the group home will say, no, we’re done,” Kiirikki said. “So they basically just sit there waiting until a new home is identified.”

Kiirikki said particularly heartbreaking is to hear a child say at first, when they arrive at the hospital, “I don’t want to go back there.”

She said, “But after days passing or weeks passing, having kids say, ‘Well, I’ll be good. Can I just go back home?'”

All too often, Kiirikki said, the children have no one advocating for them, and social workers can’t get in touch with DCF.

“It’s a lot of unreturned calls. A lot of calls with voicemail that’s full or not set up,” she said.

Warehousing children at hospitals has a ripple effect, taking up valuable beds for children who really do need to be in a hospital, they said.

A DCF spokesperson said in a statement, “For children in the care of the Department of Children and Families who require a higher level of mental or behavioral health treatment than DCF foster care can provide, DCF works with multiple state agencies to find appropriate placements. DCF continues to work with hospitals to keep lines of communication open during the day and in emergencies, and the Department’s Director of Mental Health routinely meets with hospital leadership and participates in a weekly meeting convened by MassHealth to monitor the progress of children who are hospitalized.”

DCF also says that children in the department’s custody who are waiting in a hospital for a place to live typically have exceptionally high needs, such as aggressive or assaultive behavior, so their former program may not have the resources to safely care for them and the others in the program.

DCF is also providing hospitals with emergency departments, psychiatric hospitals and mobile crisis providers with communications protocols and instructions to contact DCF’s after-hours hotline when there are emergencies outside of business hours.

Unlike a lot of the other stuck kids, the Andrews’ foster child does have a home.

“We have a child that we love and miss and want to come home,” she said.

The child, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they and them, is now in a long-term group home. The Andrews say their room is ready as soon as they are.

“When they are well and safe, we just want them back in that door,” she said.

Unlike many other children who were stuck, the Andrews remain fierce advocates for their child. And that’s part of their reason for speaking out.

“These are our children as a society, as a people, and we are failing them,” she said.

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