North Carolina has two dozen psychiatric residential treatment facilities where children with severe mood or behavior disorders can be admitted for treatment.
But the facilities, sometimes hundreds of miles from a child's home, can fall short of treating these children and returning them home on a path to healing, a WUNC investigation found.
Why it matters: Families and guardians often turn to these facilities as a last resort, such as after a suicide attempt or manic episode.
Advocates and experts say the current system can leave children isolated and further traumatized.
Driving the news: A WUNC review of more than 500 psychiatric residential treatment facility inspection reports since 2018 found dozens of accusations of staff hitting, kicking or punching children.
What they're saying: Jason deBruyn, the WUNC reporter who investigated the facilities, says groups like Disability Rights North Carolina have been calling for changes to the system for years — especially the practice of sending kids to out-of-state facilities.
"It occurred to me that it's almost hard to imagine a more disenfranchised person than a child in the foster care system that is placed in a PRTF out of state," deBruyn told Axios in an email.
"With that in mind, I wanted to inspect these facilities as much as I could, with the hope that bringing some of the conditions to light will spur positive change for the mental health needs of our state's most vulnerable people," he said.
