(The Center Square) – Maine will be required to expand community and home-based behavioral health services for youth under an agreement between the state and the U.S. Department of Justice that seeks to settle a legal challenge.
The settlement comes in response to a lawsuit filed in September by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division saying Maine’s policy violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead ruling, which is aimed at ensuring that people with disabilities receiving government assistance aren’t needlessly isolated.
Under the agreement, Maine will be prohibited from segregating children with behavioral health disabilities in psychiatric hospitals, residential facilities and a state-operated juvenile detention facility. Instead, the state will be required to expand access to community-based services and in-home behavioral health services.
“We know that too many children with behavioral health disabilities end up in juvenile justice settings or in out-of-home placements, often in different states far from their families, disrupting their lives in ways that can cause permanent harm,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.
Gov. Janet Mills said the settlement comes after years of negotiations between Maine and the federal government. She said despite the settlement the state was prepared to fight the lawsuit in court and touted her administration’s efforts to increase access and quality of care in children’s behavioral health services.
“While I am confident that the state of Maine would have prevailed if we pressed forward with a defense, I asked myself, ‘At what cost?'” Mill said in a statement. “Protracted, expensive litigation would only have detracted from what’s most important – continuing to improve our children’s behavioral health system.”
A 2022 Justice Department investigation found that Maine’s community-based behavioral health system fails to provide sufficient services.
As a result, hundreds of children are “unnecessarily segregated in institutions each year, while other children are at serious risk of entering institutions,” according to a DOJ report.
Others are at risk because their families struggle to keep them home despite the lack of necessary services, the lawsuit says.
Disability advocates, who have been urging the Justice Department for years to crack down on Maine, praised the settlement and said it would force the state to make long-awaited changes to the behavioral health system.
“The state of Maine will now honor our commitment to our children by addressing the systemic failures that have hurt children and their families by relying on harmful institutionalization,” Kim Moody, executive director of Disability Rights Maine, said in a statement. “Kids belong in their homes and communities.”