In the 1980s and 1990s Ohio closed many of its large mental hospitals, deinstitutionalizing thousands of patients who had been warehoused in often-deplorable conditions and believing that more humane treatment could be provided in community-based facilities.

One of the consequences of this policy is that the system no longer hospitalizes children in any of the nine remaining state institutions. That means that thousands of mentally ill children in Ohio now compete for a limited number of beds in private institutions. The state licenses privately run treatment centers but the bureaucracy that oversees their operation and supposedly ensures that they provide quality care is a confusing tangle of the Department of Job and Family Services and the Department of Mental Health. Supervising and subsidizing the care of children in these facilities often falls to the state's 88 counties.

"Troubled Minds, Chaotic Care," an Enquirer series that appeared today and Sunday, found a morass of lax inspections, chronic abuse and failed oversight in this system. While some facilities provide quality care in clean and safe environments, others are absolutely hellish. Yet even when the state documents bad conditions, it is reluctant to shut a facility down because Ohio desperately needs facilities willing to take in the most difficult cases, said Michael Hogan, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health.

No matter how desperate Hogan gets for beds he ought to shut down facilities where children are not safe. Cases highlighted in the newspaper investigation included facilities that routinely overmedicated patients and housed young sex offenders with children under 12. Parmadale, a facility Cuyahoga County pays $2 million a year to house troubled 48 troubled children, had six workers indicted on 110 charges ranging from corruption of a minor to rape.

Whether a child gets sent to a place like Parmadale or one where safe, high-quality care is the norm is a matter of luck, according to the Enquirer's findings. That is a disgrace. Providing adequate care for children in need should be a matter of state policy, not chance.