Typical financial operations of a child welfare agency.  Best part is that no one will be prosecuted.

Your tax dollars at work.

Audit: N.J. child welfare nonprofits misspent as much as $12.2M

TRENTON — They were hired to recruit people willing to open their homes to abused children and prepare them for the demands of foster parenting.
But an audit released today found that among 20 community agencies hired by the state, several had misspent or failed to refund a total of $12.2 million from January 2010 to June 2011 —some by awarding themselves bonuses, throwing themselves a party at a country club, or hiring others to do the work and pocketing the proceeds.The audit by the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services found the department spends $39.9 million in contracts a year to hire 20 community agencies to manage the foster care needs of 522 children, while the other 5,229 foster children in New Jersey's child welfare system are supervised directly by state workers. Given how much the state is spending on such a small pool of kids, the Department of Children and Families should end those contracts and handle all foster care services in-house to "better monitor and control their delivery," according to the audit.
State auditors uncovered $4.2 million in “unallowable” and “unreasonable spending” by several unidentified foster care agencies. They include:
• A CEO who awarded herself and 13 employees $121,500 in bonuses ranging from $2,500 to $22,000 each.
• One agency threw itself a $2,000 country club holiday party for 50 adults and 10 children and bought $5,900 in “designer merchandise” and gift cards;
• One agency used $126,000 in contract money to pay the mortgage in violation of the state contract.
• One company charged $1,800 in gym memberships for its employees.

The audit report did not disclose names of the individuals or companies it cited.Department of Children and Families Commissioner Allison Blake said that her staff was already taking a hard look at ending the foster home contracts.
“Fortunately, we are currently at a point within our child welfare reform where we ... (are) now licensing more than two times the number of beds than the number of children currently in foster care,” Blake wrote in an email to employees and other child welfare professionals late today. “While contracted foster care agencies and the support provided by them and the parents was critical to DCF many years ago at a time when the state had a significant deficit… today we must re-evaluate the program,” according to her email.
Assembly Human Services Committee Valerie Vanieri Huttle, (D-Bergen) called the findings “incredible. . . .Where are the internal controls?”
Huttle said she’s contacted the auditors and will draft legislation “to make sure there is no future abuse.”
The audit also found contractors should have returned $3.9 million in unspent cash, and while human error and technology glitches allowed the department to overpay agencies $630,000 from 2008 to 2012.

New Jersey Audit of the Department of Children and Families, Division of Child Protection and Permanency, C... by

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