Serving Severely Emotionally Disturbed Deaf Youth - Alabama ...

Statewide Deaf Children’s Services Page 16They are also extremely expensive. To illustrate, an example from thelead author’s experience is instructive. During one notable six monthperiod, the Missouri Department of Mental Health had two deaf teenageindividuals admitted into a state-run children's inpatient facility. One youthconsumed $14,000 worth of interpreting services during a two weektimeframe. This child was then released back into the same environmenthe came from, without significant modification of conditions that led to hishospitalization. The other deaf teenage boy utilized $59,000 of interpreterservices during his stay at that same facility (Hamerdinger, 2002).At the time of this writing, there are several adolescents from Alabama atthe National Deaf Academy (NDA) in Florida. To be sure, NDA is avaluable resource for the most severe cases, but some of theseadolescents could be better served through a culturally and linguisticallyappropriate community program. But because no such community optionexists for a deaf adolescent, the state is spending millions of dollars everyyear to keep these adolescents in that facility. The cost also putspressure on the social service system to bring them back to Alabamawithout having appropriate services in place.Even when the children are clinically ready to transition back home, thestate faces the challenge of how to provide services for them. All toofrequently what happens is the “revolving door” syndrome where the child