The Interagency Collaborative Team (ICT) is authorized in Title 14 Delaware Code, Chapter 31, Section 3124. The purpose of the ICT is to provide a collaborative interagency approach to service delivery for children and youth with disabilities who present educational needs that cannot be addressed through the existing resources of a single agency. In addition to planning for individual children, the ICT identifies impediments to collaborative service delivery and recommends strategies to remove them.ICT is comprised of representatives from:
- Division of Prevention and Behavioral Health Services,
- Division of Family Services
- Division of Youth Rehabilitative Services
- Division of Developmental Disabilities Services,
- Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health
- Office of Management and Budget
- Controller General
- Exceptional Children Resources Group, DOE
- Teaching & Learning Branch, DOE
In 2012, the cases of 105 children were brought before ICT. This committee evaluated 32 new cases, while privately placing 99 children and providing six with other unique alternatives, namely deeming these children eligible for 1:1 services in their existing public school setting. Forty-two of the 99 privately placed children were moved into residential programs while the remaining 57 were served in private day programs.
Of the 42 students placed in residential programs, only 19 were actually served within the state, placed in the care of Bear-based AdvoServ, while driving 23 children out of Delaware, away from their homes and families and into other states for care and intervention. Nine of these 23 were fortunate enough to be accepted at one of two nearby facilities in Maryland. The rest? Scurried great distances away, nearly ensuring that these families will never be reunited under one roof for an meaningful period of time.
The average annual cost of placing a student in a residential program: $200,082.00. Collectively, Delaware spent an average of $8,403,444.00 on residential services. ICT averaged additional costs of $6,370,063.50 on day placements - for a collective 2011-12 average expenditure of $14,773,508.00. These costs do not include ancillaries like transportation.
And all of this is okay with our Governor, his Budget Director, the President Pro-Tempore, the Speaker of the House, and the Controller General. As it stands, ICT issues one annual report, in February, to the aforementioned state leaders. Here is the 2011-12 report as issued in February 2013:
As charged by regulation/law/code, ICT also identifies "gaps in services."
Gaps in Services
Children and youth with severe disabilities, mental health concerns, and significant behavioral needs present unique challenges to schools and families. Gaps in services that support families and children in their homes and communities continue to exist. This has contributed to an increasing number of students’ placements in residential settings by multiple agencies. Often these students can be provided an appropriate education within the local schools, but their mental health or behavioral needs prevent their ability to remain in their homes with existing resources.
Delaware suffers from a considerable gap in services - a tremendous shortage of in-state private placements for eligible children. Through the educational lens, these placements are envisioned for students whose disability is so severe that it precludes a child from meaningfully participating in the least restrictive environment (LRE) a public school or district has to offer. In fact, administrative teams are required to prove that every possible environment has been exhausted - including what the layman would call the "most" restrictive environment. Unique Alternative Funding, established by Delaware code and accessed through ICT, was the mechanism by which a child and/or school's representatives could seek a private placement.
However, in practice, ICT has become the stop-gap coverage for placing disabled students whose disabilities impede their success at home - the results of which may spill over into the school setting, but that school officials lack the authority to mitigate because they cannot access the genesis of the behavior or impairment. According to the 2011-12 ICT Annual Report, "Often these students can be provided an appropriate education within the local schools, but their mental health or behavioral needs prevent their ability to remain in their homes with existing resources." And here is where the devil is in the details, and these children find themselves before ICT -frequently facing expulsion, not just from their schools, but from the state in which they live and the people who love them because this state has failed to invest in or attract the services and providers that these children need to remain here.
In 2011-12 upon meeting the requirement threshold, 23 families were forced to acquiesce to send their children out-of-state for the services they need. We sent these children to other states who have developed capacity to serve not only their residents, but to generate income by serving ours.
Last school year, the State of Delaware miserably failed 23 students and their families. This was not new news. Delaware has always lacked capacity to serve its students needing residential placement in their home state.
There is no debate regarding whether or not these children need residential placements. ICT has repeatedly chanted the mantra that these cost of residential placements is prohibitive and drain on current resources. Our state's failure lies in the fact that a state as small as Delaware has been unable to establish nor meaningfully invest in the services that the complex needs of these students demand.
Currently, only one in-state residential program, Advoserv, offers the types of services required. And this organization lacks the capacity - either the appropriate model or the physical facilities - to absorb additional students.
The data is clear. In 2004, ICT residentially placed approximately 80 students. Placements trended downward in the ensuing five years to a low of approximately 30 in 2009 when the state moved away from educational classification as the gateway for special services to the Needs-Based Funding Model currently employed universally across the state. Since 2009, the need for residential placements is scaling upward with FY 12 demanding the same need as FY 07. Day program placements are also on the rise with the FY12 demand exceeding FY07, the previous high water mark of the last decade.
The road from point of crisis to placement is excessively long in Delaware. Short-term placements are just that, short in term and lean in services. The families of beyond-complex students fight their way through the red tape to be rewarded on the other side with the message that there is no home for your child in our state. And our statewide leadership has no qualms about sending this message.
But, the drama doesn't end for these families when their children are ferried away. Imagine fighting your way into a residential placement for your child, sending him or her off to a facility hundreds of miles away, and then undertaking the weekly or monthly travels necessary to maintain some relationship with that child. Imagine learning that, after your child has been served in another state for untold years, that if you relocate to that state to be near your child, your child will loose their services offered under Delaware's ICT umbrella b/c he or she will cease to be a resident of the state when you move out of it.
Children seldom improve enough to simply leave ICT placements. That would be akin to a massive miracle cure. It is far more likely that child that is residentially placed will age out of Delaware's system to be assumed by the home state of their residential provider upon the age of maturity - ultimately shifting the cost of lifelong care out of Delaware. Again, the devil is in the details. It's far less expensive to send 23 children out of state today, knowing that there is a determinate end to the expense of their care - 18 or more likely 21 - than there is in committing to assist in funding their lifelong care.
Forty years after IDEA, the State of Delaware has institutionalized discrimination against our most disabled citizens - denoting them to nothing more than second-class citizens. Where's the outrage? Where are the politicians? Where are the resources that are so desperately needed to ensure families have a chance to be families?
No comments: