{"id":28043,"date":"2020-07-20T13:30:28","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T19:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=28043"},"modified":"2020-07-20T15:00:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T21:00:58","slug":"amended-youth-center-reforms-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=28043","title":{"rendered":"Amended youth center reforms advance"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill to codify guidelines for youth rehabilitation and treatment centers in Nebraska was amended and advanced to final reading July 20.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Sara Howard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB1140, introduced by the Health and Human Services Committee, would outline a series of requirements for the state\u2019s YRTCs, including providing:
\n\u2022 health care and medical services;
\n\u2022 a safe and sanitary space for sleeping, hygiene, education, programming, treatment, recreation and visitation for each juvenile;
\n\u2022 appropriate physical separation and segregation of juveniles based on gender;
\n\u2022 training that is specific to the population being served;
\n\u2022 sufficient staffing to comply with state and federal law and protect the safety and security of each juvenile;
\n\u2022 an age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate education program for each juvenile;
\n\u2022 a case management and coordination process, designed to assure appropriate reintegration of the juvenile to his or her family, school and community; and
\n\u2022 research-based or evidence-based programming and treatment services.<\/p>\n

Sen. Sara Howard, chairperson of the Health and Human Services Committee, introduced an amendment during select file debate that would prevent the state Department of Health and Human Services from establishing a new YRTC or moving a current one until March 30, 2021.<\/p>\n

Howard said the amendment was in response to DHHS\u2019 recent announcement that girls temporarily housed at YRTC-Kearney would move to a new building at the Hastings Regional Center campus, which recently was built to house a youth drug treatment program. Prior to the announcement, she said, DHHS had planned to return the girls to a renovated facility in Geneva in October.<\/p>\n

Howard called the department’s decision \u201chasty,\u201d and said the building in Hastings cannot safely accommodate girls currently in the YRTC system because it was constructed for a different purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis amendment merely solidifies the original intentions of the bill,\u201d Howard said. \u201cTrue planning is needed before programming is disrupted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Steve Halloran of Hastings supported the amendment, saying the Legislature should halt the proposed move so that the city of Hastings can be involved in developing a plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no planning,\u201d Halloran said. \u201cThere certainly wasn\u2019t collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

North Platte Sen. Mike Groene cautioned against a desire to \u201cmicromanage\u201d DHHS, saying senators should defer to the department\u2019s expertise.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers adopted the Howard amendment 32-3. A technical amendment was adopted 38-0 and LB1140 advanced from select file on a voice vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill to codify guidelines for youth rehabilitation and treatment centers in Nebraska was amended and advanced to final reading July 20. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-28043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-and-human-services","tag-sen-sara-howard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/LB1144Howard7-20-20a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28043"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28058,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28043\/revisions\/28058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}