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RALEIGH (MCT) — Dozens of families are scrambling to find suitable care for their children with mental illness after state officials decided to pull 141 North Carolina youngsters from a Virginia residential treatment facility following allegations of sexual abuse.

The issue highlights the ongoing lack of in-patient psychiatric treatment beds in North Carolina and leaves parents facing the possibility of having to travel even farther out-of-state to visit their children.

Jeannette Lisching of Clayton is among those with a teenager living at The Pines Residential Treatment Center in Norfolk, Va.

She received a letter last month from the state Department of Health and Human Services that said Medicaid payments to The Pines were being suspended because of concerns about poor supervision and treatment at the facility, and because of recent allegations of sexual contact between staff and children and between unsupervised adolescents.

So far, 90 of the children from North Carolina have been placed in other facilities, some as far away as Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

But 51 children, some of them with intensive needs that can make a suitable treatment facility difficult to find, are still at the troubled Norfolk center.

"There are no beds," said Lisching, whose 15-year-old grandson is at The Pines. "The state is saying they're about to cut off benefits if we don't move him to a new facility, but there's no place for these kids to go."

Lisching and her husband adopted her grandchildren, and the couple travel to tidewater Virginia at least once a month for visits and to participate in group therapy. The trip takes more than three hours each way from their Johnston County home.

Renee McCoy, the spokeswoman for DHHS, said the state has requested that The Pines "take immediate corrective measures to ensure the safety and treatment of the remaining children."

"DHHS is continuing all efforts to determine and identify beds at appropriate facilities to transition the North Carolina children who are currently at the Pines," McCoy said.

Fewer beds in N.C.

In-patient psychiatric beds in North Carolina shrank as part of an ambitious effort to overhaul the state's mental health system in 2001. State and county facilities were closed or downsized in favor of a plan that relied on cultivating more outpatient, private treatment providers.

The result was more than $500 million in state money lost to waste and fraud. Patients needing crisis treatment are routinely left languishing for days in emergency rooms waiting for a bed to open up.

State officials have tried to address the problem by paying private community hospitals to open more psychiatric treatment beds, but so far supply has not kept up with demand.

Meanwhile, cuts to the state budget have triggered the closure of more state treatment beds. Last summer, DHHS closed the last long-range treatment beds at Raleigh's Dorothea Dix Hospital for children 13 to 17 with serious mental and emotional disorders.

Some of the private facilities treating adolescents in-state have also had problems.

The state moved last year to shut down a Charlotte treatment center, The Keys of Carolina, after regulators identified multiple violations after one teen stabbed another in the eye socket with a rusty 3-inch-long nail.

The Keys remained open after its owners pledged to add staff and make other significant changes to protect patients.

McCoy said state mental health officials are well aware of the shortage of quality treatment beds, especially for adolescents.

"We are working to address that," McCoy said.

In March, a Tennessee company announced plans to open 92 treatment beds for children at a new inpatient mental facility in Garner. That facility is not expected to open for at least a year, however.

With no suitable treatment beds available in North Carolina, Lisching fears that her grandson could be placed in a facility even father away, possibly requiring an overnight trip when she visits.

"Norfolk is already a long haul," Lisching said. "If they move him too far, it could be a two- or three-day trip. That's tough to do when you have other kids in school. The state is not doing enough to help these children."