Walker acknowledged that identifying the appropriate placements and building them out will take years. Consequently, department officials have started to repurpose existing facilities and are working to modify some specialized foster homes to serve more children, she said. The department also hopes to expand a program that sends teams out to homes of children having mental health episodes, potentially averting hospitalization. The federal government will be putting money toward that effort.

At 18, Martin functions much like a 2-year-old, yet has a 6-foot-2-inch, 223-pound body. Loss marked his childhood. His mother, a teacher’s aide, died when he was not yet 2. His father, DCFS records show, was absent from his life. After his mother’s death, his grandmother became his guardian. When, during his teenage years, she suffered a stroke that left her largely bedridden, his aggression intensified

On March 29, 2016, Wardell finally left for a residential treatment center. He now lives in a foster home. His quick smile matches his fast-talking demeanor. He is back in high school and applying for summer jobs at a couple of fast-food restaurants and a grocery store. In the end, he had been held beyond medical necessity for more than four months.

In DCFS’ defense, it can be extremely hard to find homes for these children. Some are among the toughest to place, and some need extended hospital treatment. Their complex mental health issues may reflect a devastating history of trauma.

In fact, children in the DCFS system whose hospitalizations extended beyond medical necessity spent an average of 64 days in psychiatric hospitals between 2015 and 2017, according to the analysis. That’s more than triple the average stay — 21 days — for all DCFS children who were in psychiatric hospitals during that time.

DCFS, though, has known for years that when children are held in psychiatric hospitals beyond medical necessity, problems ensue. In 2015, Illinois lawmakers commissioned an audit to determine just how pervasive the issue was. That, in turn, led DCFS to create a database to track children hospitalized beyond medical necessity.

Psychiatric hospitals are designed for short-term stays — days or a couple weeks — and staff often start planning for a discharge the day a child arrives.

In the vast majority of those cases, children were held long past when they were cleared for release, not just a day or two beyond. Eighty percent of the more than 800 children whose stays became medically unnecessary between 2015 and 2017 were held for 10 days or more beyond when they should have been released.

And a waste of money, too: Unnecessary hospital stays come at taxpayers’ expense. According to DCFS records, the state has spent nearly $7 million from 2015 through 2017 on psychiatric hospitalizations for children as young as 4 that went beyond what was deemed medically necessary.

Though statistics to compare how states handle children in psychiatric hospitals are scarce, and other states also experience similar challenges, psychiatrists and mental health experts say circumstances in Illinois are among the most dire in the nation.

Instead of moving on to a foster home or residential treatment center — a less restrictive facility where children attend school and lead more normal lives — these children have languished in secure mental health facilities, the consequence of the child welfare agency’s failure to find them appropriate placements.

And for eight weeks of those 3 ½ months, he didn’t even need to be there. Doctors had agreed Brasfield was ready to be discharged about six weeks after he arrived, but the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which is his legal guardian, couldn’t find anywhere for him to go.