Mom’s Soap Box

A little boy in foster care is dead by his own hand, but a poorly functioning child welfare system also is responsible. 7-year-old Gabriel Myers hanged himself while in a South Florida foster home.

St. Petersburg Times staff writer Kris Hundley reported that at the time of his death, Gabriel was taking Vyvanse, an ADHD drug, and Symbyax, a combination antipsychotic and antidepressant, which warns of heightened suicide risk in children particularly when first prescribed.

Those drugs are so hard on children, even when they have a loving, supportive family to help them deal with the use of such strong psychiatric medications. I can’t even imagine my ADHD daughter dealing with foster care, and she doesn’t have even half the “issues” that Gabriel had to deal with on his own. It’s obscene that “the system” consistently fails such vulnerable children.

When a child is in state custody, a parent must give explicit consent after being “expressly informed” about changes in a child’s medication, including being told of medications’ benefits and risks and about alternative treatments. That never happened in Gabriel’s case, and it appears this case is not unique. It has been a common practice for DCF workers and physicians to fail to obtain parental consent when a psychotropic drug is for a nonpsychotherapeutic use, under the mistaken impression that the law didn’t require it.

And foster care advocates say that DCF’s internal records are abysmal in tracking children taking psychotropic medications. Six times, Gabriel’s caseworker documented that the Department of Children and Families had parental consent for the medication. There was no such consent. Gabriel’s mother signed a general medical authorization on the same day she was found unconscious in her car with powder cocaine, crack and oxycodone in her possession. This suggests that proper consents are not being obtained.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon is closing the loophole that allowed the prescribing of mood-altering drugs without parental consent. He also named an impressive committee to investigate Gabriel’s death and make recommendations. Sheldon made public the details of Gabriel’s situation rather than try to cover up DCF’s failings. That alone bodes well for an honest accounting and a sincere desire to reform.

But to prevent a similar situation, Sheldon will have to look beyond a caseworker’s failure to inform a parent and address a system’s failure to adequately meet Gabriel’s needs.

Gabriel said he had been a victim of sexual abuse before moving to Florida, which means he should not have been placed in any foster home where there were small children present. Gabriel also didn’t receive all the behavioral therapy he needed, and he lost the therapist with whom he had established a relationship. As Gabriel started engaging in inappropriate touching, he was bounced from one foster placement to another to protect other children. This kind of shuffling can add trauma to a child who is already at risk.

Sheldon noted that in the days before his suicide Gabriel changed medications, moved to a new foster home and received a new therapist. State law needs to be followed when prescribing medication for children in foster care. And particularly when it comes to traumatized children, there has to be a realization that drugs are no substitute for basic human care and attention.