State Slow To Revise Drug-Therapy Rules

David Postman

OLYMPIA - New restrictions on using psychotropic drugs to control foster children will have to wait until next year.

Key lawmakers say they are concerned about what the mood-altering drugs do to children under the state's watch. But even with the report of one death connected to the medication, legislators say they do not want to make hasty changes before the Legislature adjourns April 27.

"We need to do something, but we want to do it right," said Rep. Bill Backlund, R-Redmond. Backlund is a physician and vice chairman of the House Health Care Committee.

Republican budget writers have agreed to fund programs Gov. Gary Locke says would help the state monitor foster children.

A budget agreement unveiled yesterday includes $8.2 million for three foster-care programs. The House and Senate earlier had rejected Locke's proposals.

The budget now includes money for Locke's priority: a program to track foster children's medical records when they move to a new home.

The state Department of Social and Health Services, though, is moving ahead with plans to better monitor foster children, increase training for foster parents and investigate the death of 6-year-old Domico Presnell.

The plan released last week also calls for assigning a doctor to each of the 10,000 foster children under the state's care, said DSHS Secretary Lyle Quasim.

He said that while his department will work to better monitor medication given foster children, doctors are ultimately responsible.

Quasim also said similar problems likely exist with children not under the state's care. He said standards may be needed for treatment of all children, not just foster children.

But Backlund said the first steps need to focus on foster children.

Darlene Flowers, executive director of the Foster Parents Association of Washington State, said that along with better training about mood-altering drugs, she would like the state to look at alternative, and natural, ways to deal with children with behavior problems.

The department has been working on the new safeguards for months, Quasim said. But attention was focused on the department earlier this month after a series of articles in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about foster children damaged by mood-altering drugs, including the death of Presnell.

Quasim's plan includes:

-- An investigation by the American Academy of Pediatrics into the Presnell death "to determine if national standards for physicians are needed."

-- Assigning a primary-care provider to all foster children by the end of next year.

-- Better training for foster parents that includes information on medications used for behavioral management.