On January 3, 2024, CPR and its co-counsel team filed litigation on behalf of Medicaid-eligible children in Georgia who are being deprived of the mental health services they need to treat their conditions and to remain at home with their families.
The children’s mental health system in Georgia is in crisis. Every day, children with significant mental health conditions are denied the services they need to live at home, resulting in unnecessary institutionalization. The state has systemically failed to provide home and community -based services like Intensive Care Coordination, Intensive In-Home Services, and Mobile Crisis Response. Without these services, children languish in facilities, only to repeat the cycle upon discharge, often forcing parents to relinquish custody in a desperate attempt to access care. As detailed in the complaint, and in its accompanying press release, this inability to access care has devasting impacts on the individual plaintiffs and other children like them, including repeated mental health crises, avoidable hospitalizations and out-of-home placements, and involvement in the child welfare system.
The class action complaint alleges systemic violations of federal Medicaid law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, including the failure of responsible government agencies to provide and arrange for medically necessary home and community-based services and to prevent the unnecessary institutionalization of the plaintiff class.
CPR brings this case with the Georgia Advocacy Office, the National Health Law Program, and two private firms: Kilpatrick, Townsend & Stockton, LLP, and Duane Morris, LLP.