A shortage of mental health services is a major obstacle to keeping minors out of the justice system, Tulsa County District Judge Theresa Dreiling said at a legislative hearing on Thursday.
“One of the big gaps that I see is the availability of mental health services,” said Dreiling, a Juvenile Division judge for five years. “Outpatient mental health services are available, but parents struggle to find those services or get hooked up with them before the juveniles start getting into delinquent trouble.”
Dreiling and other witnesses for the interim study described a juvenile justice system in which dozens of agencies offer an array of services, but often on a limited or patchy basis and usually with relatively little financial support from the state.
Oklahoma City resident Wyjuana Montgomery described the difficulties her family encountered trying to find help with an emotionally disturbed niece.
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“Things that sound like they might be helpful do not exist,” Montgomery said. “When (the niece) was released, we were supposed to have family functional therapy. She was also supposed to have her own therapist for one-on-one counseling and a mentor. The functional family therapy is the only thing that actually panned out.
“On paper, it looks like your issue is solved,” she said. “We were excited about all of those resources. But those two (individual counselor and mentor) did not come through.”
Colleen McCarty and Seth McIntosh of Tulsa-based Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice said their organization is providing functional family therapy, which typically involves a therapist coming to the family home, in Tulsa County through a grant that expires next year.
“I don’t want it to seem like FFT (functional family therapy) is a cure-all,” said McCarty. “It doesn’t address the kids that are in detention, and it doesn’t address those that don’t have that primary caregiver, … but for those who do have the family that’s willing to carry them through and provide the support, it can be very life-changing.”
“If FFT can be as successful on a local scale as it is nationally, we can really reduce the incarceration rate in Tulsa and surrounding areas,” said McIntosh.
Dreiling said functional family therapy “is a great opportunity for Oklahoma because it focuses on the family as a whole. In most of these cases, a juvenile is not going to be successful if the whole family is not involved, especially the parent.”
With in-patient mental health difficult to access, Dreiling said, many parents find themselves “at wit’s end. They can’t find the treatment that their children need. … So (the teens) end up in the foster care system.”
Dreiling said she is seeing more cases involving juveniles with guns, juveniles charged as adults and juveniles abusing drugs, especially fentanyl.
“So, for me, the effect of the lack of services is delinquent behavior, criminal behavior, … and it’s a danger to the community.”
The Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs is requesting an additional $9.9 million for the coming budget year, an increase of about 10%, with most of that earmarked for prevention.
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