Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Report slams mental health care system
Statewide grand jury commissioned in wake of Parkland shooting highlights ‘urgent problems’
Florida’s broken mental health system has “urgent problems” and should be overhauled by a new commission with broad authority to investigate failures, a statewide grand jury says.
In its third interim report, the grand jury, commissioned in 2019 to focus mostly on safety and security-related issues in the wake of the Parkland tragedy, also calls for major changes to school policing and reporting of school crimes.
In one section that seems out of place with the rest of the findings, the grand jury takes aim at the slow progress of the Broward school district’s $800 million bond program, saying the district’s building department is “hijacking” construction.
The report makes recommendations for the Florida Legislature to consider during its upcoming session. A final report was supposed to come out this year, but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and is now expected in April.
More than half of the report is devoted to “urgent problems” the grand jury sees with the state’s mental health system: it’s underfunded, and people with mental health issues face a “patchwork of interlocking, often-conflicting sources of care.”
“To put it bluntly, our mental health care ‘system’ — if one can even call it that — is a mess,” the report says.
The problems are so complex they may require creation of a new state commission, similar to one that investigated the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The commission could have subpoena power and recommend new laws, the report says.
The oversight of mental health services currently is the job of Florida’s Department of Children & Families. But the grand jury said the department lacks the proper authority.
“It is not currently equipped or empowered to exercise the degree of leadership and control necessary to balance the competing needs,” the report says.
The commission would be instructed to figure out how to help people with “dual diagnosis,” whose cases cross over from mental health to substance abuse to law enforcement. And secondly, the commission would be instructed to structure and staff “a permanent, agency-level entity to manage mental health, behavioral health, substance abuse and addiction services throughout the State of Florida.”
This year, a new state law requires DCF and the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration to identify kids and teens who have had many emergency hospitalizations for psychiatric care and better meet their mental health needs. The law requires that local nonprofits that manage networks of mental health providers coordinate care and help children access services.
The grand jury said the law requires “an unprecedented level of cooperation” from a wide range of government entities. The panel warned that “someone must oversee this new cooperative process.”
The grand jury said school violence could be prevented if the kind of escalating misbehavior that can lead to tragedy is identified and addressed.
“Mental health issues have the peculiar potential to spiral out over time into criminal acts and violent behavior resulting in serious injury and loss of life,” the report says.
In the case of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, his attacks on other students began even before kindergarten and were documented by his teachers each year. Law enforcement also was frequently called to his home. Yet the efforts to help him — and to protect other children from him — failed.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported last year that Florida’s schools are filled with young students threatening to murder their classmates and teachers. A disturbing number were mentally impaired children who had access to guns.
The grand jury another also highlighted another problem identified by the Sun Sentinel, the false reporting of campus crimes to make campuses look less dangerous.
“Physical attacks on teachers become ‘disturbances.’ Large-scale brawls become ‘minor fights,’” the report said. “The end-result of this misreporting is that voters do not have any idea how much crime and disruption is actually occurring in the schools, and law enforcement is often not informed any crime ever occurred.”
To combat this, the grand jury recommends that school administrators defer to law enforcement when it comes to defining incidents. And for districts with their own police departments, such as in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, the chief should report to the sheriff or county police chief, not district administrators.
One portion of the report focused not so much on safety, but on alleged corruption within the Broward schools $800 million bond. Six years after being approved by voters, only 18 of 233 projects are complete and it’s nearly a half billion dollars over budget.
The district has blamed the problems on slow architects and contractors, but the grand jury accuses the district’s building department of sabotaging the program. It recommends abolishing the department and turning inspections over to the county.
“Having a building inspection department, which is controlled by and answerable to a local school district, makes it incredibly easy for school officials to hide deficiencies, spoof timelines and control the flow of information to the public,” the report said.
Specifically, the district accuses the building department of “delaying projects for literal years by imposing additional standards and criteria outside statutory requirements in an apparent effort to secure certain large-scale projects for preferred vendors.”
The office of Kathy Koch, chief communications officer for Broward schools, could not be reached for comment Thursday evening.