State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, flanked by a group of bipartisan lawmakers, describes the changes that a new mental health bill would introduce.
ATLANTA – The state legislature is set to consider a wide-ranging mental health reform bill that aims at improving services for Georgians struggling with mental-health or substance-abuse challenges.
House Bill 520 has bipartisan support and is cosponsored by state Reps. Todd Jones, R-South Forsyth, and Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously approved a sweeping mental-health reform bill as part of an effort spearheaded by the late House Speaker David Ralston. A mental-health reform commission has continued to meet since then and developed recommendations that informed this year’s bill.
“This is in fact the decade of mental health,” Jones said about the ongoing efforts of state policymakers to address the problem in Georgia.
“There is not a week that goes by … where we literally have at least one or two Georgians contact us personally and say, ‘My son, my daughter … what am I supposed to do?’ They can’t find a bed [for treatment].”
Currently, more than half of the 600 intensive psychiatric-treatment beds available for children in Georgia are used for children from out-of-state because Georgia charges less than other states, Oliver noted.
The legislation would address the shortage of treatment beds by creating a committee to study the problem.
“We need a lot of analysis of where our beds are, who’s using them, why are they using them, and what is the need?” Oliver said.
The bill would also require state agencies to work together to create a shared definition of “serious mental illness.” This would help state agencies collect data and coordinate services, Jones said.
The new legislation also tries to address the needs of people who cycle between homelessness, jails and hospitals due to serious mental-health or substance-abuse problems.
“These individuals … make up a small population but they draw down so much of our resources,” Jones said.
The bill would require the state Department of Community Affairs, which oversees housing policy in the state, to study ways to improve housing prospects for these so-called “familiar faces.”
If passed, the bill would create a loan forgiveness program for mental-health providers who are already in practice.
“If they’re serving people in Georgia and still have a student loan, we want them to apply and get the benefits,” Oliver said.
The bill would also streamline some aspects of professional licensing procedures.
Two “peer support specialists” would be added to the Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission, which is tasked with studying Georgia’s mental-health system and recommending policy reforms. Peer support specialists are people who have lived through mental-health or substance-abuse challenges and use that experience, coupled with specialized training, to help others with similar problems.
“It’s important for peers to be on there because they are the ones … who have been through this system and know what works and what doesn’t work,” said Kim Jones, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-Georgia.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Department of Human Services Commissioner Candice Broce speaks to a Senate committee about proposed changes that would help streamline Georgia’s child custody proceedings.
ATLANTA – The state legislature is considering bills to address the problems Georgia’s foster care system faces, including the practice of housing children in hotels or state offices when placements cannot be found.
“With the full weight of the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s leadership behind these efforts, we have a real opportunity to make lasting positive change for Georgia’s children,” Department of Human Services (DHS) Commissioner Candice Broce told the Senate Committee on Children and Families this week.
A package of four Senate bills would streamline or expedite the process of making legal decisions about the transfer of children to state custody and adoption proceedings.
For example, one bill would allow doctors to testify without being present in person to ensure expert testimony can be provided within the quick timeframe needed for child custody proceedings.
“What we’re trying to do here is … get the law in sync with the time pressures that we have in these very important situations,” said Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens.
Though the bills would not solve all of the foster-care problems in Georgia, they are aimed at making procedural changes as soon as possible, Ines Owens, policy and communications director for Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, told Capitol Beat this week. It’s likely the state will set up a task force or commission to examine the problem in more depth once the legislative session ends.
Georgia’s hoteling problem has drawn national attention, with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., announcing Friday that he and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are launching a bipartisan inquiry under the auspices of the U.S. Senate’s Human Rights Subcommittee, which Ossoff chairs.
Ossoff released a letter he and Blackburn sent to DHS requesting further information about departmental policies, the number of children living in hotels or office buildings, and staff vacancy rates.
While Ossoff’s focus is on Georgia, hoteling is a national problem, with many otherstates also using the practice for foster care children when placements cannot be found.
“We have received the letter, and we look forward to sharing our efforts to protect Georgia’s children,” said the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), the division of DHS that oversees foster care, in a statement issued in response to Ossoff’s letter.
Georgia’s hoteling problem is complicated by health-care failures and other stresses, experts have testified during legislative hearings this year.
Children who are not receiving adequate behavioral health services are very difficult to find placements for, Dr. Michelle Zeanah, a Statesboro pediatrician, told lawmakers in January.
“Who wants to sign up to take care of a child who fights and spits and hits all day every day?” Zeanah asked lawmakers. “It makes it very hard for the difficult children to be placed and get services.”
Such children often fail to get needed behavioral health services because of problems with Georgia’s foster-care insurer, Amerigroup, Zeanah and others said.
Georgia pays Amerigroup, which is owned by the large for-profit insurer Elevance (formerly Anthem), a monthly rate for each child insured by the company, whether or not children receive health-care services.
DFCS officials contend that Amerigroup routinely denies needed care for children in foster care. The problem has gotten so bad that DFCS has established its own in-house legal team to address the insurer’s denials.
“Every day, my office will review all medical treatment denials, and we will file appeals if we determine that such treatment is medically necessary for the child or the youth,” Brian Pettersson, the lawyer who leads the new team, told lawmakers in January.
By the end of last year, the DFCS legal team had filed, and won, 26 appeals against denials of placements for children in state custody in psychiatric residential treatment facilities. An additional 10 such appeals were pending as of December, according to a DFCS memo obtained by Capitol Beat News Service. DFCS plans to expand the program this year, according to the memo.
Other problems facing the agency are a lack of foster-care placements for children who need them and a shortage of caseworkers.
DFCS has an overall turnover rate of 30.3%, according to a fiscal 2022 workforce report published by the state’s Department of Administrative Services.
Starting pay for a DFCS caseworker is low, and the job comes with many stresses, from having to work after hours and transport children in personal vehicles to wrangling with the legal and health-care systems.
“This is why our staff quit: We are here to protect children from their caregivers who may be maltreating them,” Audrey Brannen, a complex care coordinator at DFCS, told lawmakers at the January hearing. “We cannot do that when so many of our resources, both staff and financial, are trying to plug the holes in our health-care system.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, introduced a bill this week to create an innovation commission focused on better serving Georgians with intellectual and developmental disabilities. (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – Georgia disability advocates are calling for the creation of a special commission devoted to the problems Georgians with intellectual and developmental disabilities face.
State Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, introduced legislation this week that would create an “Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Innovation Commission” akin to the highly successful behavioral health commission formed in 2019.
Harrell’s proposal has drawn bipartisan support, including from Republican Senate co-sponsors John Albers of Roswell, Mike Dugan of Carrollton, Chuck Hufstetler of Rome, and Ben Watson of Savannah.
The 22-member commission would include members appointed by the governor, the lieutenant governor, and the speaker of the House of Representatives. Appointees would include, among others, people with intellectual or developmental disabilities and their family members and caregivers.
The commission would be required to focus on proposed changes to state laws and regulations around providing services to people with disabilities.
The Senate Health and Human Services committee will need to approve Harrell’s bill before it can move to the Senate floor for a vote.
Georgia provides funding slots for people with disabilities to receive home and community-based services so they are not segregated in institutions. Those slots are jointly funded by the state and the federal governments, with the state paying about one-third of the cost and the federal government picking up the rest.
Advocates contend the state should dramatically increase the number of slots to meet the needs of Georgians with disabilities. There are currently 7,155 people on the waiting list.
A state Senate study committee co-chaired by Harrell and Albers that met last fall recommended the state increase the number of slots by about 2,400 this year. However, the governor’s budget proposal only includes sufficient funding for an increase of around 250 slots, which follows an increase of about 500 slots from last year’s legislative session.
An additional challenge facing the state is low pay for those who provide care to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Advocates say increasing the number of waiver slots is insufficient and that caregivers, often known as “direct support professionals,” must be paid more to ensure people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have the care they need.
Currently, those caregivers only make $10.63 per hour. The study committee recommended increasing the pay to at least $15 per hour to help ensure people with disabilities have the resources they need.
But to truly address the problem, the state should increase the pay to at least $18 an hour, said D’Arcy Robb, the executive director of the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities.
A pay increase is sorely needed, said Ryan Whitmire, president and CEO of Developmental Disabilities Ministries. The non-profit organization runs 18 group homes and provides in-home services to people with disabilities. It currently has about a 15% staffing vacancy rate.
Whitmire said he recently lost one of his best staff members –- a woman who is “called” to help people with disabilities — to a job at a retail organization, where she could earn $16 an hour instead of the state-mandated $10.63 an hour at his organization.
The staffer was apologetic, Whitmire said, and noted she would miss her job and the people she cared for. But she simply needed to earn more money to survive.
Because of the low pay and resultant difficulty in retaining staff, Whitmire said his organization ends up paying a lot in overtime to current workers. That added expense prevents the organization from expanding to offer more slots for people who need care, he said.
“This has made it to where we can’t grow,” Whitmire said. “You have to be able to pay wages in order to develop the infrastructure to serve.”
Advocates are calling on lawmakers to find money in the state budget to both increase the pay for caregivers and increase the number of waiver slots.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, speaks about his bill addressing gang violence. (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – The state Senate Thursday approved a wide-ranging bill aimed at stemming the tide of gang-related crime in Georgia.
Sponsored by Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, the 10-page bill makes a number of changes to Georgia’s criminal law to address gang violence.
Albers said he consulted a wide range of groups in crafting the law, including prosecutors, judges, victims’ rights groups, district attorneys, trial lawyers, activist groups and others.
“This is much needed and real criminal justice reform,” Albers said.
The legislation increases the penalty for possession of a firearm by a person convicted of a forcible felony or domestic violence.
Currently, the penalty can range from one to five years in prison. Under Albers’ bill, it would increase to at least five years behind bars.
The measure also makes a number of procedural changes to Georgia’s gang laws. If passed, it would mandate that Superior Court judges handle all bond hearings for gang crimes. Currently, magistrates sometimes handle these hearings.
Albers gave the example of a 2010 murder of a child by a gang member who had been released on bond by a magistrate judge.
Local governments and others would also be able to bring civil, not just criminal, actions against gang members. The bill would also consolidate the venues in which criminal convictions could be pursued.
“Oftentimes, gang members will continue to move around from county to city,” Albers said. “Rather than trying to prosecute that in multiple areas, it allows them to consolidate it in one single venue.”
Certain past crimes could also be used to prove gang membership.
The bill would also require that people convicted of the repeat offense of abuse of children, people with special needs, and elderly people receive the maximum sentence possible in most cases. It also allows prior evidence to be used in prosecuting people charged with those crimes.
The state Senate approved the bill by a 44 to 8 vote. It will now move to the Georgia House of Representatives for consideration.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The state Senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday that would expand Georgia’s law governing telemarketing calls.
The bill would allow Georgians to hold companies liable for telemarketing calls made by third-party contractors as well as pursue class-action lawsuits against telemarketers.
“What we’ve seen in Georgia is a proliferation of telemarketing calls,” said Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, the legislation’s chief sponsor. “They interrupt homes at dinnertimes.”
“But our ability to stop them pursuant to the Georgia Do Not Call Act has been limited because we’ve seen those companies go outside and reach to other groups to make the calls for them.”
Tillery gave the example of a car-warranty company contracting with a third-party company to make phone calls to Georgians. Currently, the car-warranty company’s liability is very limited under Georgia law.
The bill the state Senate approved would fix that, Tillery said.
“[A company] can’t get around Georgia law by contracting with another company out-of-state,” he said. “They actually would be recognized as the entity making the call in the first place, and third-party liability would extend to them.”
The bill also would allow Georgians to bring a class-action lawsuit for such phone calls with damages of up to $1,000 per call.
A similar measure passed unanimously in the state Senate last year but failed to get approval from the state House of Representatives. The bill now moves to the House for consideration.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
