6-year-old committed to mental health facility and was allegedly given anti-psychotic medications without mother’s consent
(NBC NEWS) – A 6-year-old girl from Jacksonville, Florida, was committed for two days to a mental health facility without her mother’s consent after she allegedly threw a temper tantrum at school.
Also without the permission of her mother, the child was allegedly given anti-psychotic medications at the center.
The child’s mother, Martina Falk, is now demanding answers from officials at Love Grove Elementary School in Jacksonville for how they handled the incident that happened on Feb. 4.Follow this story to get email or text alerts from NBC2 when there is a future article following this storyline.Follow this story
According to NBC News, Falk’s lawyer, Reganel Reeves, said a mental health counselor was called to the school because Nadia was reportedly having a tantrum and throwing chairs.
Nadia, who has ADHD and has been diagnosed with a mood disorder, was evaluated by the counselor who determined Nadia needed to be committed under the Baker Act.
The Baker Act gives social workers in Florida the power to initiate involuntary holds on children as young as 2 without the need for parental permission, reported NBC News.
Falk was not called and informed of the incident until after Nadia had already been committed to the facility.
Falk said her daughter is not able to communicate what happened to her because of her disability.
“She can only tell you bits and pieces. ‘Mommy, they locked the door. They wouldn’t let me out. Mommy, they gave me a shot,'” Falk said.
Deputies with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had been called to the school to assist in taking Nadia to the facility.
In police body-cam footage, Nadia appears to be calmly walking out of the school with deputies, NBC News reported.
“You’re not no bad person,” a deputy says, later adding that Nadia has been “acting very pleasant.”
A police incident report shows that staff at the school said Nadia was “destroying school property, attacking staff, out of control and running out of school.”
The decision to have Nadia committed under the Baker Act did not come from school district personnel or police, according to Tracy Pierce, with Duval County Public Schools.
After evaluating the girl, a licensed mental health counselor with Child Guidance Center made the decision to commit the child.
“The officers in the video were not present during the events which motivated the school to call Child Guidance. The police officers were also not present when Child Guidance was intervening with the student,” Pierce said. “The student was calm when she left the school, but at that point, Child Guidance had already made the decision to Baker Act based on their intervention with the student.”
According to Pierce, the school will only call for assistance from a counselor when the child is behaving in a way that might put others or themselves at risk.
She said several steps are followed to try and de-escalate a situation before a counselor is called and the parent of the student is notified immediately when the counselor decides the child should be committed under the Baker Act, according to NBC News.
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