Fewer children would be held in West Virginia institutions - whether for child welfare, mental health or criminal justice reasons - under a campaign announced by the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia on Monday.
The campaign comes as West Virginia teeters between taking steps to reduce child institutionalization and moving in the other direction, by building large new facilities to house children.
Last spring, at Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's request, the Legislature unanimously passed a juvenile justice reform bill that takes steps toward keeping children charged with minor offenses, like truancy, out of institutions.
In June, the U.S. Department of Justice said that West Virginia was failing children with mental health needs, violating their civil rights by too often putting them in institutions rather than offering support services within the community.
"The state has needlessly segregated thousands of children far from family and other people important in their lives," Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta wrote to Tomblin, following a year-long study.
But just three weeks later, the state moved forward on a plan to fast-track the construction of a new mental health facility in Logan County that would house 70 kids, away from their homes.
The facility would be located at the Earl Ray Tomblin Industrial Park (just off of Gaston Caperton Drive) on the site of a reclaimed mine in Holden. The facility, called Dazzy Vance Mountain Retreat, would be directly across the street from the Southwestern Regional Jail. It would serve children ages 4 through 21.
The state Department of Health and Human Resources was unable to answer questions about the proposed facility on Monday afternoon, but in her request to fast-track the project, DHHR Secretary Karen Bowling said it was for children at risk of being sent to facilities out of state.
"It is my belief that there is an identified need for these psychiatric residential treatment services in Logan and surrounding counties," Bowling wrote in a letter to the state Health Care Authority in June.
Jeff Fleischer, the CEO of Youth Advocate Programs, a national nonprofit group that works with youths in the juvenile justice system, said the proposed facility's age range was "telltale."
"They just want to fill the beds," Fleischer said. "Who creates a program that can serve 4- through 21-year-olds?"
About one in five children in West Virginia have some sort of mental health problem, Carrie Rishel, a professor of social work at West Virginia University, said Monday.
When children and families don't have access to community-based services to treat those problems, they build up and reach crisis levels, Rishel said.
That's when children end up in some sort of residential or institutional facility.
"That's been shown over and over again not to be in the best interests of children," Rishel said.
Residential treatment is also significantly more costly than treating children in their communities, while they remain at home.
The proposed facility would cost up to $500 per child per day, according to an estimate submitted by Trinity Health Care Services, the company that would run the center.
That's compared to just $75 per day for community-based treatment, according to the ACLU.
Community-based treatment includes things like mentor programs, counseling, teen courts that keep kids out of institutions and non-residential mental health centers, like Prestera, which serves eight southwestern West Virginia counties.
"Community-based programs lead to better life outcomes and lower recidivism rates," said Jennifer Meinig, director of the state ACLU. "It's shameful West Virginia continues to invest in a system that is clearly broken."
The juvenile justice reform legislation passed last spring is estimated to save $20 million by keeping children out of residential programs. That money could be reinvested in community-based programs, but the savings would not materialize if the new facility in Logan is built, said Mishi Faruqee, who works on juvenile justice for the national ACLU.
The biggest thing West Virginia could do to improve mental health in children is to have an actual comprehensive plan, Rishel said.
She worked on a 2012 Legislative study of the state's youth mental health system that recommended a unified, statewide plan, but none has been created. Such a plan, which West Virginia has for things like asthma and diabetes, would assess services, set goals and lay out responsibilities for various agencies to avoid duplication.
"The juvenile justice system is all about holding young people accountable," Faruqee said. "But it's the systems that have failed these young people, the system is completely unaccountable."
Faruqee, Fleischer and Rishel spoke at the Capitol Complex on Monday as part of the Our Children, Our Future campaign, which seeks to end child poverty in West Virginia.
Mental health and juvenile justice reforms are two of 20 policy proposals that the three-year-old campaign discussed on Monday, including things like expanding after school programs, expanding broadband access and a state Earned Income Tax Credit.
The campaign will hold a hearing in the House chamber on Tuesday to pick which proposals it will lobby for during the next legislative session.
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.