A 13-year-old boy in the custody of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services was admitted to an inpatient psychiatric hospital in September 2018. About two weeks later, an administrative law judge ruled that there was no medical reason for him to stay there. But Social Services didn’t pick him up for nearly four more months.
A similar thing happened to a 14-year-old boy in the custody of the Prince George’s County Department of Social Services in October 2018 and to a 14-year-old girl in the custody of the Baltimore County Department of Social Services in January 2019, according to data provided by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, which represents children in this situation,
And there are dozens more children in Maryland’s foster care system with similar stories. They spend weeks, sometimes months, in psychiatric hospitals after doctors and even judges say they no longer need to be there because local Department of Social Services, or DSS, workers say they have nowhere else for them to go.