Youth Treatment Abuse Records: What Helps and How to Ask

Your treatment records, incident reports and state licensing reports can help. You can ask for many of them yourself. Gather them only when you feel ready.

Which records can help?

Your treatment records from the program can help. So can incident reports, state licensing reports and any police or child welfare reports. You do not need all of them to talk with a lawyer.

Write down what you remember too: the program’s name, the town, your dates there and any staff names. Keep your notes somewhere private.

If the program closed or changed its name, a lawyer can still look into who ran it when you were there.

Can I get my own treatment records?

Often, yes. Federal health privacy law lets you see and get a copy of your records from health care providers it covers, as long as they still have them. The provider may ask you to make the request in writing.

The provider must act within 30 days, with one extension of up to 30 more days. It may charge a reasonable fee based on its costs.

Some notes are left out. You have no right to a therapist’s separate session notes, called psychotherapy notes, or to papers made for a court case.

For some kinds of refusals, you can ask that another licensed health professional review the decision.

A parent can usually act for a child’s health records. A provider can refuse to let a parent act for the child if it has good reason to believe the parent abused the child and decides that would not be best for the child.

What records did a psychiatric treatment facility have to keep?

These treatment facilities must write down certain events. Staff must note each restraint or seclusion in the young person’s file by the end of the shift. Serious events must be reported and kept in the file.

Serious events include a death, a serious injury and a suicide attempt. The facility must report them by the end of the next business day to the state Medicaid agency and, in most states, the state’s protection and advocacy group.

For a minor, the facility must tell a parent or guardian within 24 hours. A copy of the report must stay in the young person’s record and in the facility’s incident logs.

Restraint and seclusion notes must say when it began and ended and which staff were involved. The facility must also keep a record of each emergency and how it ended.

These federal rules apply only to this one type of facility. Other programs may have kept different records under state rules.

How can I find state licensing and complaint records?

Start with the state agency that licensed the program. States license these places and look into reports of abuse. California’s licensing site shows the last five years of facts on each place it licenses. It has reports on problems people raised.

California’s children’s residential program oversees places such as short-term residential therapeutic programs and group homes. For more detail on a citation, the state says to call its local regional office.

Complaints about health care facilities, such as psychiatric hospitals, go to a different agency, the California Department of Public Health.

Other states have their own licensing offices. A lawyer can help you ask for records that are not posted online.

Who else may have looked into the facility?

Each state has a protection and advocacy group, often called a P&A. These groups can look into abuse of people with mental illness, including children, at places that give care. They can get some reports from the place and from state reviewers.

Under federal rules, a P&A can visit public and private facilities and meet with residents to look into abuse. In some cases it can get reports by the facility, by state investigators and by licensing reviewers.

A P&A can act on many kinds of complaints, including anonymous phone calls and news stories.

To find your state’s P&A, call the Disability Information and Access Line at 888-677-1199.

A 2024 U.S. Senate committee report found that agencies that check on these facilities often rely on the facilities’ own records. That is one reason more than one source can help.

What happens when I share records with a lawyer?

A lawyer can tell you which records matter most and what else may help. Keep your originals and ask how copies will be stored. Get any fee terms in writing.

If a lawyer would be paid from what you recover, the ABA’s model rule says that deal must be written and signed by you. It must spell out the costs you could owe if the case is lost.

Going through old records can be painful. RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline is free, confidential and open 24/7 at 800-656-4673, or text HOPE to 64673.