Originally published at: Boy stuck for weeks at Colorado hospital after dad abandons him and social services too busy to help | Boing Boing
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Boy stuck for weeks at Colorado hospital after dad abandons him and social services too busy to help
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I hope he gets to a good place.
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I wonder if the kid has other family and they just didn’t know he was abandoned? The so-called father was cold enough to leave his son in an ER, I’d wager he’s cold enough to lie to the kid’s other family members about his whereabouts.
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This is an unacceptable response. In what possible way could a 13 year old child on the spectrum be considered safe living in a hospital ER? I’m sure the hospital staff did everything possible to care for him, but that’s no place for any 13 year old to be living, much less a child with autism.
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My sister used to teach at a school that had a lot of extremely poor kids (living with their families in temporary housing for the homeless, etc.), and she said that, with some regularity, kids would come home from school to discover that their families had moved and left them behind. So…
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They couldn’t even find the kid a room in pediatrics?
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This is late-stage capitalist America. An underfunded bureaucracy will always find a way to excuse its negligence.
This is heartbreaking. I hope this young man finds the family he deserves.
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“we don’t know, but what we do know is that you can’t just leave a 13-year-old in an ER for weeks on end with no end in sight.” …
Actually, you absolutely CAN abandon a kid in the ER. And an at risk adult. And an at risk senior. And a demented patient. and and and and. I’ve seen them all get left there, and the hospitals become responsible for trying to find them a place to go.
In this case, the state can start trying to find him a place to go via the foster system, but that takes awhile. And that’s IF they can find him a place to go. And so he stays in the ER…
As for why he stays in the ER - well, in this case, Longmont does not have a pediatrics department. But even if they did, he would most likely stay in the ER for a couple reasons -
he actually might be easier to keep safe there (depending on his flight risk, etc, and ignoring the fact that living in an ER and watching what goes on there is not healthy in ANY way).
it is easier to place someone from the ER than once they are “upstairs.”
And since he has no medical reason to get admitted (ie, appendicitis), most admitting services won’t accept him as a ‘social’ admission - partly because no one will get paid for admitting him.
I assure you there are worse scenarios in ERs all over the country right now. That does not make this scenario at all acceptable. I just think it is important for people to know this is not an isolated incident at one hospital.
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Are you suggesting giving Social Services tanks?
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WTF? Where’s all the media coverage in Colorado? Where’s the national coverage? I did a quick Google about this and found no coverage of this until about three days ago. And he’s been in the ER for three weeks? The local coverage is basically none.
I’m ashamed of both my state, government and media. I can’t understand why the Legislator didn’t go to the TV media.
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… I am one of these but I’m not sure which 
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Only cost $1000 per shot for the cheapest ammo type up to $10000. What a bargain!
/S
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that’s the USian medical system for ya.
i realize you are referring to the tanks, but defence overspending/ no M4A is the point.
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Too bad this kid got stuck in an ER and not a well or a cave or whatever. He would have been rescued weeks ago.
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You can take it that way too. The shock value still doesn’t change much. The system is broken. I feel like a broken record too everytime I repeat pointing out the same awful thing.
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Because it is safe, compared to some places they could put him.
BRB burning everything down.
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Daughter works for Social Services as a case worker. (Not in CO) Can confirm, they are underpaid, overworked and unsupported. They should carry a max of 12 cases each, she is carrying 20-30 at any given time. They have had kids living in firehouses, and even in their offices, because of a shortage of foster homes and group homes. One of her kids was stuck in the hospital not because he was sick, but because there was no place for him to go. She caught endless shit from the docs and nurses there. They could easily make more money (lots more) doing almost anything else, and only do this to protect the kids. There are lots of folks to shit on about this kind of situation, but the social workers are absolutely not on the list.
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If some soul saw the boy there and took him home to care for, offer love, understand his abilities and needs, we would spend great amounts of tax money to punish that person for caring. We’re a nation guided by soulless puritanical mindsets. In some way that boy is deserving of what he’s getting. He has nothing to offer society, no money, nothing but a scared lonely soul trying to sort out his world. A lonely whimper in the midst of a wilderness. Where are the prolife people, where are the leftist who decry this shit. Poor lost young soul.
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There are plenty of leftists (although most would not call themselves that) who are decrying this, several right here. Forget the “prolife” idiots, their condern ends at birth. Blaming overwhelmed, underappreciated folks who care but have limited resources a/o bandwidth won’t get us anywhere. To solve a problem, they first have to acknowledge that it exists. Still waiting for that from TPTB, and those of us in the trenches are falling fast.
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