The Legislature finds and declares the following:

(a) The Legislature has declared its intent to provide, at the local level, a range of appropriate mental health services for seriously emotionally disturbed minors. These programs include both outpatient and nonsecure residential care and treatment.

(b) The Legislature recognizes that, while some minors will benefit from this care and treatment, there exists a population within that group who have been adjudged wards of the juvenile court pursuant to Section 602 who are seriously emotionally disturbed, and by lack of behavior control and offense history, are not benefiting from existing programs, including the 24-hour facilities currently being operated under juvenile court law (Chapter 2 (commencing with Section 200) of Part 1 of Division 2).

(c) The Legislature finds that there are no treatment facilities specifically designed and operated to provide both intensive mental health treatment and behavior control to this population of wards in a secure setting. These wards are frequent failures in open residential care and when confined to traditional juvenile justice system facilities, disrupt programming, endanger themselves and others, and require intensive supervision including occasional isolation and provision of a one-to-one supervision ratio. The behavior and needs of this population affect the ability of the existing facilities to meet the program needs of the remainder of the population which is more appropriately detained or committed there.

(d) Psychiatric hospitals frequently refuse to accept these wards because of their offense history or their extremely disruptive behavior, because they do not always meet medical necessity for acute admission, or because the lengths of stay in inpatient programs are too limited in duration. Because of these problems, seriously emotionally disturbed minors adjudged to be wards pursuant to Section 602 do not receive the level of mental health care necessary to interrupt the cycle of emotional disturbance leading to assaultive or self-destructive behavior.

(e) The Legislature therefore declares its intent to establish regional facilities which will provide an additional dispositional resource to the juvenile justice system, and which will demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of providing the services described in this chapter to seriously emotionally disturbed minors who have been adjudged wards of the juvenile court pursuant to Section 602 and whose physical and mental treatment needs require a secure facility and program. It is also the intent of the Legislature to secure for the minors committed to such a facility, the protection, custody, care, treatment, and guidance that is consistent with the purpose of the juvenile court law (Chapter 2 (commencing with Section 200) of Part 1 of Division 2).

(Added by Stats. 1991, Ch. 89, Sec. 170. Effective June 30, 1991.)