For years, some of Alaska’s most vulnerable children have faced harsh conditions for months at a time in locked psychiatric facilities. A new law aims to change that.

The legislation, HB 36, follows a 2023 Mother Jones investigation that found that the state’s Office of Children’s Services routinely placed foster kids at North Star Behavioral Health, Alaska’s only private psychiatric hospital for minors, when there were no available foster homes. Despite North Star’s troubling track record of assaults, escapes, and the routine use of seclusion and chemical restraints, foster children have been admitted to the facility hundreds of times in recent years. Some stayed for months after they were ready for discharge.

HB 36, which passed into law Monday and goes into effect in 90 days, will require a court to review a foster child’s placement at a psychiatric hospital within seven calendar days to determine if that child meets criteria for hospitalization. (Until the legislation passed, a preliminary injunction required a hearing within 30 days, but the hearings were sometimes delayed.)

“When this........

© Mother Jones