Every year, thousands of children — some as young as 5 — are sent to residential treatment centers across the country, often after their families were promised real help. Many are separated from everyone they know, placed hundreds of miles from home through foster care placements, court orders, or parents who had run out of options.

One of these facilities is Fox Run, a youth treatment center in St. Clairsville, Ohio, owned by Universal Health Services (UHS), a Fortune 500 healthcare company. According to local police records obtained by The Marshall Project, kids at Fox Run have repeatedly tried to escape — running into frozen cornfields, crossing active highways, and attempting to flag down strangers for rides. Former staff say the facility failed to address residents' trauma, leaving many kids to reach a breaking point with nowhere safe to turn. When their distress turned into behavior problems, several ended up in juvenile detention instead of getting care — a outcome so bleak that, for some, jail felt like the safer option.

This isn't an isolated failure. A 2024 U.S. Senate Finance Committee investigation into UHS and three competing companies found similar patterns of neglect and abuse at facilities nationwide. Fox Run has stated it disputes these allegations.

Kids who are sent away for help deserve to actually get it — not neglect that makes them more desperate to run than to stay. Universal Health Services' leadership and Ohio's child welfare regulators need to act now, with real oversight and accountability, before another child decides that risking a frozen field or a busy highway is safer than staying inside.

Sign the petition to demand accountability from Universal Health Services — before another child is forced to run for their life.