Sen. Ronda Storms, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs, is on the warpath in Tallahassee.
The Republican senator is not happy with the responses she is getting to her investigation of the Department of Juvenile Justice’s (DJJ) use of psychotropic drugs on the kids in it’s care. Critics of the practice call it “chemical restraint. ” Gayla Sumner, a spokesperson for the DJJ has stated that it is against the agency’s policy to use mind-altering drugs for discipline or punishment. On Tuesday the 18th Storms roundly blasted the DJJ in her committee and now she is turning up the heat.
With 34% of the minors in its system on psychotropic medication the DJJ certainly seems to require scrutiny. When DJJ secretary Wansley Walters, didn’t appear before Storms’ committee it was bad enough, but when another DJJ testimony included no mention that Walters believed the issue to be serious enough that she ordered the investigation herself last May.
Dara Kam of the Palm Beach Post provides some details:
On Wednesday, Storms, R-Valrico, admonished Department of Juvenile Justice Secretary Wansley Walters in a letter after Walters failed to appear before Storms’ Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee on Tuesday. At that meeting, Storms upbraided Walters’ aides for not being candid with the committee about the use of the mind-altering medicines.
Storms ordered Walters to appear at the committee’s next meeting in November.
On Thursday, in the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, Storms ordered DJJ’s director for administrative services, Fred Schuknechts, to come back with a financial analysis of the department’s spending on psychotropic drugs ‘for your entire population for whatever the reason. … And I would like that post-haste.’
Skipping a meeting when you know you’re being investigated does not cast your case in a positive light. Whether there is anything wrong or not, and it does appear there probably is, that sort of behavior gives the appearance that something shady is going on.
In an extremely unflattering comparison Storms notes that the DJJ uses psychotropics almost three times as much as the Department of Children and Families. Margie Menzel, a writer for The Ledger, brings us the pertinent quote:
She also noted that DJJ’s 34 percent medication rate was much higher than the 14.8 percent rate of use of medication reported by another agency, the Department of Children and Families.
‘Our children in [DCF] care have been badly burned, some of them have been starved, some of them have been sexually molested, some of them have been abandoned,’ she told Anderson. ‘Your [DJJ] population cannot be more needy. Everyone in our population has had some form of maltreatment.’
If the DJJ provides Storms with the requested update the situation should return to committee soon.
