Group aids families with mentally ill children

A Southern Arizona-based program is hoping to aid families of children with mental illness.

Children’s Help and Assistance for Residential Treatment, or CHART, was founded by Diane Mulligan, who acts as the chairman of the board, and her mother, Mary Ann, to help families deal with the problems associated with finding long-term treatment for mentally ill children. Many times, the only option for such cases is to place the child in a residential treatment center, where they receive 24-hour care and supervision, including medication, therapy, and tutoring.

Mulligan was inspired to create CHART, a non-profit organization, after her own experiences in trying to find residential treatment for her adopted son Robert, who is bipolar.

“We were in a crisis situation, and people told me that I needed to put him in a residential treatment center,” Mulligan said. As she began to research the various centers, she said, the information she found was at best vague, and at worst an advertisement.

“Basically what I found were a lot of Web sites that were marketing Web sites, but nothing that was objective information about residential treatment centers,” she said. Her search also revealed the staggering cost of such extensive care, about $10,000 a month. Mulligan said she also found that most insurance policies don’t cover such treatments.

“So you’re in a crisis and you’re looking at residential treatment, and you’re looking at $10,000 a month, and you’re thinking, how in the name of God am I going to pay for this?” she said.

In its attempts to help families, CHART works with experts in the adoption and residential treatment fields, as well as with the government to provide objective information regarding various treatment centers, which can be as varied in their programs and quality as a school, said Mulligan.

“There are charter schools, and there are magnet schools, the same thing is true for residential treatment centers. It’s very important that you have a good match for both you and your child, because the last thing you need is to continue to move that child,” she said.

Though based out of Tucson, Mulligan said there are currently no residential treatment facilities in Arizona. There are, however, over two dozen such facilities in Denver.

When funds are available through donations and grants, CHART also attempts to donate those funds to help families pay for the initial months of residential treatment. Due to the considerable cost of the programs and CHART’s limited ability to raise money, they are currently withholding those grants to families located in Arizona and Colorado with adopted children, ages 9-13, because of the particularly difficult options they face in these situations, Mulligan said.

When parents of adopted children find they cannot pay for the residential treatment their child needs, they often end up with a very tough choice to make, she said.

“Many people, at this point, do what’s called a voluntary dependency and neglect. They are basically charged with dependency and neglect, they give their child back to the state or the county, and then the county takes over the cost of the child’s care,” she said. “Pretty much the parents are out of it at that point.”

The second option that Mulligan said she often found parents facing is bankruptcy.

“They do it as long as they can and then they declare bankruptcy,” she said. “It’s not much of a choice.”

The children that need such advanced care that require placement in a residential treatment facility often need long-term care, Mulligan said. When funded by the state, residential treatment normally lasts for one year, she said.

“These are children who have severe emotional disturbances [and] aggressive, violent behavior.” Children suffering from abuse are also candidates for such care, she said.

CHART has placed a variety of information on its Web site, www.chartrtc.org, including questions to ask potential residential treatment facilities and links to various financing options. The two-year-old program has helped a number of families, Mulligan said, however now their focus is on raising funds to help those who can’t afford to pay for treatment.

“We’re trying to give the families enough breathing room, and enough of a break, so that they will continue to fight to maintain their family unit,” she said, “even against these incredible odds.”