By Dave Boucher and Christine MacDonald: Complete Post through this link…
Wayne County officials worked hard during a legislative hearing Wednesday to tell state lawmakers that state health officials are at fault in the long-standing crisis at the county’s juvenile detention center rife with violence and staffing issues.
“We are a substitute teacher, not the long-term classroom teacher. If you think about it from a health care metaphor, we are the triage, the emergency room, not the long-term stay bed. And yet we are finding that our children are stuck here for, in one case, several years before they are offered the type of treatment that they deserve,” said Abdul El-Sayed, Wayne County’s director of the Department of Health, Human & Veterans Services.
“And so we realized that the circumstances became unsafe, and for that reason we are going to step up and do the work that we understand to be both our responsibility, and then also do the work that we understand to be the state’s responsibility.”
