Survivors of residential treatment facilities and other advocates urged reform at the Capitol on Wednesday.Mariam Zuhaib/AP

The Senate Finance Committee released on Wednesday the findings of a two-year investigation that revealed widespread abuse and neglect at residential treatment facilities attended by thousands of children each year. The report, which looked at four of the nation’s largest behavioral health providers—Universal Health Services (UHS), Acadia Healthcare, Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health, and Vivant Behavioral Healthcare—detailed a system that “optimizes profit over the wellbeing and safety of children” and incentivizes facilities to “treat children as payouts.”

The companies capitalize on per diem payments from Medicaid and other sources of taxpayer dollars by filling large facilities to capacity with children—many of whom are sent by the child welfare, juvenile justice, and educational systems—while reducing the number and quality of staff, the report found. As a result, children suffer physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of staff and peers; experience improperly executed uses of physical........

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