December 20,2024

Wyden Urges GAO to Investigate the Deceptive Marketing Schemes of Youth Residential Treatment Facilities

Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the deceptive advertising and marketing practices of youth residential treatment facilities (RTFs) and the role third-party marketing affiliates play in securing placements for children in child welfare system in these facilities.

The GAO has a long history of acting as an RTF watchdog and shedding light on the mistreatment and neglect of children living in RTFs. Nevertheless, there is little information on how advertising and marketing practices influence state agencies’ decisions related to where to place children in the child welfare system. What little established information does exist is outdated with the GAO’s only work product on RTFs’ advertising and marketing practices dating back to 2008.

“Since placement decisions directly impact children’s outcomes, both in the near and long term, this information is needed to understand the full range of factors that impact a placing agencies’ decision of when and where to send a child to an RTF,” Wyden wrote in the letter to GAO Comptroller Gene L. Dodaro.

Specifically, Wyden requests that the GAO’s investigation includes:

  1. Examples of advertising practices, marketing materials and in-kind donations, including trips, used by RTFs across a geographically diverse sample, including all types of facilities eligible under the Medicaid Psych Under 21 benefit, to advertise treatment for children;
  2. A comparison of such practices listed in (1) across state child welfare agencies.
  3. A comparison of such practices listed in (1) across placing entities (parents and guardians, mental health care providers, child welfare agencies, the juvenile justice system, and educational systems).
  4. An analysis of the role that RTFs’ third-party marketing affiliates, subsidiaries, or consultants, including educational consultants, play in securing placements for children in facilities owned or operated by their parent company.
    1. An analysis of the professional background and compensation provided to third-party marketing affiliates, subsidiaries, or consultants, including educational consultants.
  5. Experiences of youth with lived experience of RTF placements and their families relating to whether marketing materials informed their placement decisions.

In June, Wyden released “Warehouses of Neglect” revealing that RTFs receive billions of dollars in federal funding – including Medicaid and child welfare dollars – and provide substandard behavioral health care while also subjecting kids to abuse and neglect. In October, Wyden asked the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether four major youth RTFs are committing Medicaid fraud by failing to provide needed care that they are required to provide to Medicaid beneficiaries. In September, Wyden urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to use existing authorities to act now to protect and strengthen behavioral health services for children enrolled in Medicaid and who are in the child welfare system.

The letter text is available here.

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