In the psychiatric ER, how do you address the issue of child/adolescent patients being left there by caregivers and becoming extended stay patients?

Unfortunately, then it becomes a matter of contacting the Department of Children's Services for intervention. However, that is often a slow and arduous road.

I did psych ER for 7 years. As soon as we got the feeling that this was happening, we would call CPS for child abandonment, and then CPS would usually pick up the kid in around 2 days. If it was a group home and the staff were ignoring our calls or refusing to pick up the kid then we escalated to the owner/director of the group and threaten to report them to licensing (they are usually very afraid of losing their license to run group homes) and within some hours a group home staff would show up ...

Unfortunately, we have yet to find a productive solution. We have partnered with CPS/DSS, who work with families, offering resources and services. When the family still declines, CPS pursues placement options, even across the state, though this does not always result in a solution. We've involved MHLS attorneys to advocate for the children in Family Court, but a slow process that does not have placement options available. We hold weekly meetings with DSS and OMH, attempting to problem-solve, but...

These situations can be very challenging and taxing for psychiatric ED staff. I agree with the other responses to get DSS involved sooner rather than later for child abandonment. Another challenge is that patients can escalate their behavior or become agitated because they are in the confined environment of an emergency department. In these cases, the family or the group home continues to decline to pick up the patient because of these behaviors, even if the psychiatry team has determined these ...

Two separate and equally serious questions: 1) child abandonment and 2) ongoing care of a child that one, as a physician, believes to have been abandoned, and that the child has no immediately available adult legal guardian decision-maker.

First question: child abandonment. This is relatively straightforward. Same as child sex abuse or any other such child harm issue in an emergency room or any medical setting. Error on the side of protecting the child. Notify appropriate authorities immediatel...