Washington House Democrats

Dickerson bill creates children's mental health system

February 8, 2007

OLYMPIA—Thousands of children in Washington who suffer from mental illness would finally get the help they need, if legislation approved by a House committee today is signed into law.

“Kids are suffering and parents are desperate because the mental health system is failing Washington’s children,” said state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle), who worked with more than 60 organizations to author the children’s mental health legislation.

“These reforms will set the foundations for a real children’s mental health system where services are coordinated, based on proven research, and reach kids before problems get out of hand,” Dickerson said.

Dickerson pointed out that more than 60 percent of the youth in the juvenile justice system in Washington state have significant mental health problems. Her bill would tighten the links between mental health services and the juvenile justice system as well as the child welfare system.

Dickerson’s legislation, House Bill 1088, would:

·         Provide mental health services to families before children are determined to be in imminent need of hospitalization or out-of-home placement.

·         Offer training to primary care physicians to help them to identify disorders and available treatment services for children. Currently, one in four youth on Medicaid who are prescribed anti-psychotic medication do not receive clinical treatment.

·         Open three county sites, two in western Washington and one in Eastern Washington, to develop treatment programs that "wrap around" seriously disturbed children and their families and avoid placing those children in residential programs or psychiatric hospitals.

·        The bill establishes a goal that the children’s mental health system in Washington, by 2012, will include: early intervention and prevention services; equity in access to services; child and family-centered services; high quality and culturally competent services; increased use of evidence-based treatment, and qualified and ethnically diverse providers.

“Creating a children’s mental health system that works won’t be easy or cheap,” said Dickerson. “But it won’t be near as expensive as the current, failed approach that is filling emergency rooms, the child welfare system, psychiatric hospitals and the criminal justice system with children whose mental health needs were ignored until it was too late.”

The members of the Early Learning & Children's Services committee voted 4-3 to recommend passage of House Bill 1088.

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