§1665g Indian Youth Program

Summary

Create and run detox and rehab programs for Indian youths, including behavioral health care. The Secretary, through the Indian Health Service, must set up regional treatment centers and support local tribal programs under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. Centers must work with intake and rehab programs in the youth’s home community. The government must build, fix, buy, staff, and operate at least one youth regional treatment center or treatment network for every area covered by an area office. For California, the single area office is treated as two—one for the northern part of the State and one for the rest. Money to staff and run these centers follows section 13. A center must be located inside the area it will serve and chosen by a majority of the local tribes. The Secretary may provide funds to the Tanana Chiefs Conference, Inc., to lease, build, renovate, run, and maintain a residential youth treatment facility in Fairbanks, Alaska, and to the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Corporation to staff and run a residential youth treatment facility without regard to the proviso in section 4(l) of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. Until more Alaska facilities exist, those two must make every effort to serve all eligible Indian youths in Alaska. The Secretary may also offer intermediate behavioral health services for children and teens, such as pretreatment help, inpatient and outpatient care, aftercare, emergency care, suicide prevention, and treatment for mental illness and self-harm (including child abuse and family violence). Funds may pay to build or update facilities, hire behavioral health workers, run group homes, sober or transitional housing, youth shelters, convert beds to adolescent psychiatric units, and support intensive home- and community-based services. The Secretary will set funding rules with tribal input. Federally owned buildings that are suitable can be used for local or regional youth treatment under agreed terms. Each Service unit must have community-based rehab and follow-up with trained local staff (counselors, mental health workers, community health representatives, etc.). Families must be included in youth treatment, and at least 10 percent of the money for community rehab and follow-up must pay for outpatient care for adult family members tied to a youth’s treatment. The program must prevent and treat abuse of multiple substances and provide mental health care in tribal, reservation, and urban communities. The Secretary must collect and report data on numbers and costs of youth mental health services, referrals, residential treatments on- and off-reservation, and the costs of those services for the report under section 1671.