In social services lingo, they’re known as BCOPs: children who are Beyond the Control Of their Parents.
They are everywhere, and they are the most vulnerable and underserved population in the state.
Sarah Davis, a 15-year-old, mentally ill runaway, is a classic BCOP, according to Roxane White, Denver’s manager of human services. The child who walked away from a residential treatment facility in Fort Collins has been at large in metro Denver since July, hanging out with prostitutes and drug addicts while her parents search for her frantically.
In the two years that Sarah has been struggling with bipolar disorder, psychosis and other illnesses, Cindy and David Davis have found themselves all alone in their quest to save their daughter. And if my e-mail inbox is any indication, their tragic plight is frighteningly common.
BCOPs are modern lepers, demonized for their illnesses, shunned, ridiculed and denied care at every turn.
Schools fail them, expelling them or punishing them for misbehavior until they drop out.
The police are at a loss to do anything with them until they commit a crime.
Private health insurance plans cover only a fraction of their treatment costs – if any – and most families can’t afford the care required to stabilize them permanently. In the handful of private residential treatment facilities available, care often runs $25,000 to $40,000 a month.
Unless they are neglected or abused by their parents, public agencies don’t provide assistance, so loving parents often are compelled to relinquish custody of their kids just to get them minimal psychiatric care.
It’s a lonely, desperate struggle.
“It’s one of our greatest gaps in services,” said White.
Young people with mental illness literally have to commit a crime to get help.
Even then, juvenile detention facilities are so understaffed and overcrowded, most children wait weeks to see a psychiatrist even if they are hallucinating, cutting themselves or clearly suicidal.
Still, the Davises won’t give up. With tips from Post readers, Cindy spent nine hours tracking Sarah on Sunday.
N. Lou Scrivani, who was visiting Denver from New Jersey, said he saw her Thursday on a street corner along Colfax Avenue. She was holding a sign asking for money while he and his son were at a Denny’s restaurant.
“There were three law enforcement officers seated behind us,” Scrivani said. “I know they had to see her. It would have been impossible not to.”
A homeless couple on Colfax said they’d seen her Saturday. Two security guards at the Denver Public Library promised to watch for her. A man at a homeless shelter in Capitol Hill called and said he gave her money just days ago and told her she was too young and pretty to be out there.
“People tell me she looks unkempt and hungry,” said Cindy. “She’s wearing baggy clothes that she picks up anywhere. I know she has to be cold. The wind just cut through me yesterday.
“I just keep hoping to find her.”
We should all hope she finds her.
The cost to taxpayers of allowing children like Sarah to live on the street is enormous.
Long-term, the most likely scenario for a teenager with untreated mental illness is life in prison at a cost to taxpayers of thousands each year, said White. And children like Sarah also are at huge risk for contracting and spreading HIV, hepatitis C and other deadly diseases.
But there is another cost to abandoning Sarah and the more than 600 other young runaways who live on the streets of metro Denver, and it’s one that can’t be calculated in mere tax dollars.
“As a community, what does it say about us that we have 14-year-old and 15-year-old children prostituting themselves and abusing drugs on our streets, and we look the other way or blame the child?” said White.
“What does it say about us when we
all know that there but for the grace of God …”
It could be your child.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
