State Rep. Sandy Hamilton has been meeting with Tom Demarco and other administrators at the Lincoln Prairie Behavioral Health Center (LPBHC) over the past month to learn about the issues surrounding how children are being treated in the current system and developing a strategy to help fix a “broken system.”
Rep. Hamilton was informed of a number of instances where children are not being treated appropriately and bureaucratic red tape is failing our most vulnerable children. One example involves a young girl, 10 years old, left in a room all by herself for 286 days. She finally has left to go to a residential facility in Chicago, after 286 days!
And, now another young 8 year old girl arrived and has been here 121 days —which on an average length of stay of 11 days. She turned 9 while here. She is regressing every day because of no hope in sight of ever leaving.
“The system is broken! We need to solve this now,” exclaimed Rep. Sandy Hamilton. “We have to be the voices of these young children!”