A trend has emerged in recent years: families of children with severe disabilities surrendering their children’s care to the Department of Children’s Services.
Alice Rolli, president and executive director of the Children’s Hospital Alliance of Tennessee, tells the Scene her organization has noted a trend of foster kids with disabilities landing in the hospital — this is because of a lack of care they receive in homes they’re placed in by DCS. Through Senate Bill 2362/House Bill 2188 — which passed unanimously on the Senate floor earlier this session and saw bipartisan support to pass the House last week — the alliance looks to prevent hospitalization through additional collaboration between DCS and the Department of Disability and Aging.
“It’s sad,” Rolli says. “There are families who believe that their child would be better off in state custody because that parent or that caregiver, they feel like they don’t have an expertise to help a child with really complex needs. … They have done everything that they know to do.”
Rolli says the two organizations worked well together for the state’s Strong Families program, which allowed DDA to offer short-term placement for kids with disabilities and provided incentive to expand the network of places those children could live after they were found to be staying in the hospital for months at a time. The new legislation includes additional training for DCS staff from DDA and a report on the collaboration between the two agencies.
Hospitals have seen an increase in broken bones and eating struggles from children in DCS custody, especially those who have severe autism and are nonverbal. One child had not eaten in days due to sensory issues, Rolli says.
Tennessee children claim ‘draconian conditions’ in foster care system
“That means you have to shift the awareness and the training that it’s not a kid being obstinate,” she says. “This is a kid that has a significant disability, and the people around that child need to have a different training and a different mindset.”
Another bill, one aimed at children who are in DCS custody because of juvenile justice violations, has raised concerns for advocates who fear it could disproportionately affect children with disabilities. SB 1868/HB 2526 passed the Senate last week and is awaiting action in the House as of this writing. What started as a bill that would incarcerate foster youth in juvenile detention centers and other carceral settings has been amended, but still allows for a court to extend a youth sentence for six months for assault. It would also create a task force for foster youth in need of “heightened supervision.” According to Zoë Jamail, policy and advocacy director for restorative justice nonprofit Raphah Institute, the problem here is twofold: The children don’t have to be adjudicated for the assault for their sentence to be extended, and assault is broadly defined in the state’s code — including verbal threats.
“How do we protect against young people’s sentences being extended by six months for an incident where perhaps it was a lack of training in either de-escalation or behavior intervention that contributed to the assault?” says Jamail. “Arguably, in that situation, it’s not that a young person needs additional time in DCS custody. They need a more appropriate placement.”
On the Senate floor, Sen. Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) also pushed back, following a failed attempt from Sen. Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) to add guardrails for the length of custody and legal representation for the child.
“You’re telling a child who doesn’t have access to an attorney … that [if] a staff member of a privately owned facility who makes money from keeping children at that facility every single day accuses a child of something, that facility gets to make six months more money at the expense of taxpayers of Tennessee, and there’s not a single thing the child can do about it,” said Roberts, who crossed party lines to vote against the Republican-sponsored bill.
Issues with DCS are nothing new, but they have reached a fever pitch this year. Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) called for a federal investigation of the department, and three separate recent reports called for more oversight of facilities in which the children are being held: a state comptroller’s audit from 2025, a Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations report from earlier this year calling for more beds, and a report from the state’s Second Look Commission, which found children using meth and being victimized by sex trafficking while in DCS custody.
Those three reports are what Roberts cites as the inspiration for legislation that would require DCS to create a public website with information about licensing and list agencies’ license status, information concerning any adverse licensing action and information showing inspections. That legislation, SB 2647/HB 2349, is making its way through the legislature as of this publication.
