Second verse, same as the first

The Iowa Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments this week on the closure of the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo, which was previously deemed unconstitutional by a lower court. Not that it will likely make a difference to the youth served by such facilities.

At 7 p.m. on Feb. 24, Justices will hear oral arguments in the case brought by public employees and state lawmakers against Gov. Terry Branstad and Charles Palmer, director of the Iowa Department of Human Services. The proceedings will be live-streamed via the judicial branch's website.

Few, if any, still expect the case to result in a reopening of the facility, which served as a placement of last resort for delinquent girls. And that, Juvenile Court officials told lawmakers this past week, is a troubling problem.

As many as 40 girls would have been referred to the Toledo facility this past year, the officials said. Instead, they were funneled to adult court or are spending additional time behind bars. Ironically and sadly, it was the prolonged use of isolation cells that first led to scrutiny in Toledo.

The luckier ones, it seems, escape such treatment by being shipped to out-of-state facilities, away from whatever support system they've established in Iowa.

The level of care provided in Toledo - trauma-informed care, access to a psychiatrist and other behavioral health priorities wrapped within a gender-specific, secure environment - no longer exists in the Hawkeye State, Ruth Frush, chief Juvenile Court officer in Iowa's First Judicial District, told The Register.

A spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Human Services disagrees, saying the young women are having their needs met. Yet, if memory serves, this is the same state agency that expressed dismay when allegations of abuse surfaced at the Toledo facility, despite the fact that DHS was tasked with oversight.

The agency has tracked the 21 youth in the facility at the time of its closure last year. Eight are in group care, six were returned to parents or guardians, five aged out of the juvenile system, one is in the state's acute psychiatric institute for children and one other is in jail.

I could not find an accurate accounting of the at least 29 other youths who were quietly funneled from the facility in the year before its shuttering - much less others not placed there due to the state's ongoing investigations of its own dismal oversight. And even when investigations were completed, participants hand-picked to serve on a task force by Branstad, the state could not bring itself to follow the directives of improving and maintaining the facility.

Sound familiar? It should. State officials, bolstered by Branstad's proposed budget that strips mental health funding, are now quietly funneling patients away from two of four state-run mental health institutes. Please look the other way when court, corrections and mental health officials point out the lack of private treatment alternatives.

Maybe it is a good thing a Bible college is now interested in the Toledo facility. With so much focus in Des Moines on politics and very little on the needs of our state's most vulnerable, prayer might be all some have left.

' Comments: @LyndaIowa, lynda.waddington@thegazette.com or (319) 339-3144.