Cases of autism are on the rise.  This also includes the number of children and teens severely impacted by this disability.  Families of these children often suffer alone in silence, struggling to maintain a safe environment for themselves and their children, while providing the intensive level of support their children need. The options for these families are limited in Ohio.  There are very few residential facilities that accept youth; fewer still that are able to accept adolescents with violent behavior.  

It is difficult for any parent to seek out a residential placement for their child.  In Ohio, parents of severely disabled or mentally ill teens have to bear an additional, heart wrenching, burden: surrendering custody of their child.  This process includes opening cases with their county child protection agencies and dealing with social workers, attorneys, and courts.  

Why do parents have to surrender custody of their children?  The simple answer is funding.  Child protection agencies have access to federal Title IV-E funding, which they match with county funds.  If child protection services is paying for this care, they require that parents surrender custody to them.  Sadly, even this option is not available to families in some of Ohio’s poorer counties.   Residential services are expensive.  Only families of great wealth are exempt from this process altogether.

Regardless of how residential care is funded, no parent should have to surrender a single parental right to receive care for their developmentally disabled or mentally ill child.  

Although the immediate concern of this petition is to advocate on the issue of custody, a thorough analysis is needed to review how Ohio’s County Boards of Developmental Disabilities, ADAMH Boards, Local School Boards, Medicaid, and County Children Service Agencies should be funded and work together for Ohio’s children.  Ohio is also in desperate need for more residential facilities for children and youth.  

Imagine if a child needed a medical card to receive a heart transplant.  Would it make sense if the state needed to take custody of the child in order for that child to have surgery?  Does it make sense to have child protection services receive custody from loving parents who do not abuse their child? (Or in some cases are the victims of abuse themselves?)

I am writing to you from personal experience.  My son Andrew is severely autistic.  Despite very early intervention, therapies, special education and medication, he became violent in our home and at school shortly after hitting puberty.  At the age of 16, there are few places in Ohio that can help children like Andrew.  We have had to surrender custody of him to get him into a place where he can receive the intensive behavioral care he needs.  He is now 2 ½ hours from home, because that is the only place in Ohio that our county children services could send him.

This peitition is asking the Ohio General Assembly to please introduce legislation to prevent other good parents from having to surrender custody, even temporarily, of their children.  It adds too much pain to an already impossible situation and limits, parents’ ability to advocate for their own children.