A federal judge has delivered a stunning rebuke to Florida health administrators, ruling that the state’s long-standing failure to provide adequate care to children with complex medical needs has resulted in the “tragic” and illegal warehousing of fragile children in institutions.
Florida’s unwieldy system of funding and providing care for children with medical complexities, which relies largely on managed-care providers who are unaccountable to the state, has left families in “a maze almost impossible for parents to escape,” wrote U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks. Because so many of the children require constant care, parents are forced to leave them in nursing homes, where some spend their entire lives.
Middlebrooks ordered a series of remedies designed to allow parents to remove their children from institutions — and make it easier to keep their children at home if they are already there.
