A stakeholder group tasked with examining why children with behavioral health needs in Maine often end up stuck in hospital emergency departments has issued its report.
Group member Atlee Reilly of Disability Rights Maine says one key recommendation is to expand community-based services for kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
"We're not going to solve problems at the deep end, the various deep ends of our system, without the robust community based services for kids to kind of fall down to an appropriate level of care," he says.
Reilly acknowledges that bolstering community-based services could be challenging at a time when the state needs to tighten its belt. But he says Maine has already made a commitment to improve services under a recent settlement of a federal lawsuit.
The Department of Justice had alleged that Maine violated the American with Disabilities Act by relying on segregated settings such as hospitals to provide behavioral health care to children.
