Florida Foster Care Child Drugging

By: Laurie Anspach Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Florida Foster Care Child Drugging
Tax Payers can speak up!
by Laurie Anspach
Director of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida

The Foster Care children of the State of Florida are one large segment of the Medicaid population. Current records from The Florida Department of Children and Families show that more than 1,700 prescriptions of antipsychotics were given to Foster Care children in 2006 and again in 2007.

In order to understand the scope of Foster Care child psychiatric drugging in the state of Florida, it is essential to draw a timeline of what concerns have arisen in the past and what, if anything, has been done to effect a positive change.

In 2003, the Statewide Advocacy Council (SAC), a Governor appointed office, issued a report that closely examined the considerable increase in the prescription of psychotropic drugs to children in Florida’s Foster Care System.

At the time of that report, the SAC stated that “more than 9,500 children in Medicaid in Florida had been treated with psychotropic drugs in the year 2000.” The SAC had many concerns at the time, some of which included the use of psychotropic drugs for preschoolers without FDA approval to back up using these drugs on such young children; the diagnosing of such young children; and little documentation to show that appropriate written informed consent was given to administer these drugs.

The SAC brought up the issue of the serious side effects of psychotropic drugs and listed some of them to be “decreased blood flow to the brain, cardiac arrhythmia, weight loss, permanent neurological tics, psychosis, depression, suicidal tendencies and more.”

They stated: “In many of the records reviewed there was no psychiatric diagnosis or the diagnosis was so vague that it would be difficult to justify the use of psychotropic medications.”

44% of the children had no medical evaluation prior to receiving medications. Regarding proper informed consent, the SAC found that 38% of the cases had no authorization obtained and 15% had unauthorized signatures.

The SAC recommended that the State of Florida should closely monitor the children.

The SAC’s concern about this issue and their recommendations may have come to no avail. In 2006, 3,974 Foster Care children in the state of Florida were given a prescription; 1,874 children were given 2 or more prescriptions at one time. In 2007 the numbers are almost identical and reveal that 3,694 children were given a prescription and 1,785 children were given 2 or more prescriptions at the same time.

Children as young as 4 years old were prescribed drugs such as Abilify, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zoloft, Concerta and Depakote.

Tax payers can help to affect a change for the better! Contact your legislators, local reporters and Florida’s Agency for Healthcare Administration and let them know that you have the facts, you have concerns and want better solutions for the care of our Foster Care children, including full informed consent which would include information on the risks as well as the alternatives to psychotropic drugs.