Parents tell House oversight subcommittee Michigan lacks beds, oversight and coordinated care for youth with serious mental illness

Parents and family advocates told the Michigan House oversight subcommittee on the child welfare system that gaps in state and private care are leaving children with serious emotional disturbance without adequate treatment, forcing families into expensive private placements or the juvenile justice system.

“This journey to help my son has been harrowing,” Rachel Kacherry Murray, a parent who said her family spent about $250,000 on out-of-state treatment, told the subcommittee. Murray and other witnesses said private insurers routinely delay or deny residential care and that community mental health agencies (CMHs) and state oversight by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) are inconsistent or inaccessible.

The testimony centered on three recurring themes: a shortage of in-state residential treatment and specialized beds, administrative and payer-level barriers that delay placement, and what several parents described as retaliation or punitive responses by CMHs when families press for care.

Most urgent, parents said, is the lack of residential capacity for children with high acuity. Multiple witnesses described children who were discharged from facilities as “too acute” for the receiving program and then sent back to emergency rooms or home, only to reenter the cycle of crisis care. “They are being sent home to kill themselves,” Rachel Kacherry…