{"id":29849,"date":"2021-03-29T15:25:26","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T21:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=29849"},"modified":"2021-04-01T12:16:36","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T18:16:36","slug":"emergency-yrtc-placements-advanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=29849","title":{"rendered":"Emergency YRTC placements advanced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juveniles housed in the state\u2019s youth rehabilitation and treatment centers could be moved more quickly during an emergency situation under a bill advanced from general file March 29.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. John Lowe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB273, as introduced by Kearney Sen. John Lowe, would have allowed the Office of Juvenile Services to transfer juveniles to a different YRTC without a court hearing.<\/p>\n

Lowe said the bill would address some \u201clong-running\u201d issues at the state\u2019s youth facilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time there have been challenges when a juvenile comes to YRTC Kearney with some underlying substance abuse or behavioral health problems,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes they do this in a way that causes self-harm or in a way that is threatening or dangerous to other juveniles or staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Judiciary Committee amendment, adopted 40-0, replaced the original bill. The amendment would allow the state Department of Health and Human Services to file an emergency change of placement motion to transfer a juvenile to a different facility. A hearing on the motion would be held within 24 hours and could be conducted by telephone or videoconference.<\/p>\n

An emergency change of placement could be filed in cases when a juvenile requires additional specialized care to address substance use or behavioral health needs. Under the amendment, an emergency also could include a public health emergency, natural disaster or damage that renders a YRTC uninhabitable.<\/p>\n

The court would order a temporary emergency change of placement if it determines that the change would be appropriate and in the best interests of the juvenile.<\/p>\n

Omaha Sen. Tony Vargas spoke in support of the bill but expressed concern that the amended language of LB273 remained overly vague. He said it would not explicitly require a demonstrated emergency need for a change in placement to occur.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a little concerned about how this could be interpreted because it doesn\u2019t really define an emergency, it more just defines that the judge has to determine whether or not the [placement] is an appropriate move and in the best interests of the juvenile,\u201d Vargas said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha also supported the bill but said it needed additional provisions to protect the rights of parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy concern is that if we don\u2019t have direct notification [of a transfer] to that parent … we\u2019re essentially removing the parental rights until a hearing down the road may be heard,\u201d Wayne said.<\/p>\n

Senators advanced the bill to select file on a 35-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juveniles housed in the state\u2019s youth rehabilitation and treatment centers could be moved more quickly during an emergency situation under a bill advanced from general file March 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29843,"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":[13],"tags":[176],"class_list":["post-29849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-john-lowe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/LB273Lowe3-29-21a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29849","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=29849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29888,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29849\/revisions\/29888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}