Collected documents related to Arkansas’s psychiatric residential treatment facilities for youth (PRTFs) are now available for view on the Disability Rights Arkansas website.
PRTFs are designed to provide therapeutic services and programs for children and youth who struggle with psychiatric, behavioral, and emotional disorders and challenges. The services provided are less medically intensive than those you’d find in a psychiatric hospital or the psychiatric unit of a general hospital. There are approximately 800 beds in PRTFs across the state. Most, but not all, of the 13 PRTFs in Arkansas are private for-profit entities.
Multiple divisions within the Arkansas Department of Human Services and outside agencies are responsible for aspects of oversight or investigations into these facilities. Information from these various entities is not coordinated or tracked and is therefore not available in one place. This makes it impossible for guardians, judges, other states, and placement agencies to make informed decisions about the placement of youth. For this reason, DRA is posting that information and will continue to update it as more documents become available.
The information on each facility that is included in the database is all information obtained through public information requests. This information is available to the public but has not previously been correlated and published or otherwise easily accessible to the public.
Documents contained in the database include:
- Surveys, complaint investigations, and incident notices from the Placement and Residential Licensing Unit (PRLU), a unit of the Division of Childcare and Early Childhood Education; and the Office of Long Term Care (OLTC), which implements the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations regarding restraint and seclusion and reviews these facilities every 5 years;
- Reports related to police response to PRTF locations;
- Reports issued by the Health Services Permit Agency, the entity responsible for issuing Permits of Approval (POAs) for several types of facilities including Residential Care Facilities and Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities;
- Meeting transcripts and agendas, and actions taken by the Child Welfare Agency Review Board, which publishes and has the authority to amend the rules setting minimum licensing standards for the operation of child welfare agencies; and
- Medicaid Inspection of Care reviews, not yet published here but coming soon to the site.
Information will continue to be updated as documents become available. Please report any broken links to info@DisabilityRightsAR.org.