New York OCFS and SUNY Caught In Lustful, Multi-Billion Dollar False Claims Tryst

What does the New York Office of Children and Family Services have to do with the State University of New York Research Foundation Fraud?  According to OCFS - they are partners: 

http://www.ocfs.state.ny.us/ohrd/partner.asp

http://www.bsc-cdhs.org/TrainingPrograms/SpecialProjects.aspx

http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Public-school-private-dealings-1403960.php

What this partnership means is there are conflict of interests which allow for the continuing practice of filing false claims and nothing is being done about it.  The sting from a slap on the wrist quickly fades when dealing with a lustful, multi-billion dollar false claims tryst.
HHS OIG Review of Training Contract Practices at the New York Department of Social Services A-02-93-02006

NY videos show detained juveniles attacking staff

NY videos show detained juveniles attacking staff

ALBANY (AP) -- Security videos from New York's four juvenile prisons show residents assaulting each other and staff, who say current permissive policies make the centers more dangerous.

Eileen Carpenter, recently retired from the state Commission of Correction, said Monday she gathered the 2009-10 videos last year while responsible for oversight of the four secure centers that house males ages 14 to 21, including murderers, rapists and armed robbers.

The videos show a staff member and a resident sucker-punched and knocked out in separate assaults; two youths attacking a staff member; groups attacking individual youths; and other incidents where large groups refused to comply with orders, in one case smashing furniture. In most, juveniles grappled with staff and eventually were escorted away or wrestled down, subdued and in some instances handcuffed.

None of a dozen videos showed staff striking residents. Carpenter, a correctional facilities specialist who also interviewed workers and residents, said at a news conference that she didn't see that happen on hours of security tape she watched but declined to say that it never occurred.

"This is what's going on on camera, and these residents are fully aware of what's going on on camera," Carpenter said. "I worry about what goes on in rooms where there is no camera. There's always been an inherent risk in working with this population of incarcerated juveniles, but the increase in violence over the past three years can no longer be ignored, covered up or remain unaddressed. The situation warrants immediate and drastic action to prevent the ongoing threats, violence, injuries and the potential loss of life."

Staff from some of the centers who attended the news conference said the situation worsened under the policies of Commissioner Gladys Carrion, who was appointed to the post in 2007 by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer. For example, residents no longer have to walk in lines with hands clasped behind their backs, and instead give gang signs, can skip school and programs without consequence, and that staff are perpetually worried that the security videos of incidents are going to be used to accuse them of child abuse.

Carpenter said she brought the documented violence to the attention of officials in Gov. David Paterson's administration last year and to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration this year. She and her attorney Michael Sussman said nothing has been done.

The four so-called secure facilities for boys are Brookwood and Goshen in the Hudson Valley, Industry in the Rochester area and MacCormick in the Southern Tier.

Godwin Maduemezia, who works at Brookwood and is president of his union local, said at the news conference that serious or violent incidents occur there weekly, and 90 percent of assaults involve conflicts between residents.

Separately, Carpenter is suing the state, claiming gender discrimination forced her to retire early.

Stephen Del Giacco, spokesman for the Inspector General Ellen Biben, said the office is following through on Cuomo's request that it review the matter. Cuomo's office declined further comment.

Carpenter and Sussman said they had been in contact twice with the inspector general's office, which had previously shown no interest.

Under Carrion's existing policy to place more youths in community programs, more than a dozen detention centers and group homes have closed since 2007, with the population of incarcerated juveniles declining.

Meanwhile, data from the Office of Children and Family Services showed 138 assaults on staff in 2010, up from 133 a year earlier.

Carrion spokeswoman Susan Steele said Monday that while the agency is involved in reforming the state's juvenile justice system, providing for the safety of staff and residents "is of the utmost concern." The office reviews all incidents to determine where changes are needed, and has implemented staff training initiatives, installed surveillance cameras and upgraded security systems, she said.

The Commission of Correction, charged with ensuring New York prisons are safe, stable and humane, last summer directed staff to examine reports of unusual incidents and surveillance videos at the youth facilities, which were viewed by commissioners Sept. 22, spokesman John Caher said. The commission is continuing to monitor them "to ensure that those facilities are safe and secure places to live and to work," he said.

Complaint Filed by Eileen Carpenter Against New York State Commission on Corrections

16-year-old restrained at treatment center dies

MANVEL, Texas — Brazoria County authorities and state child welfare officials Monday were investigating the death of a 16-year-old boy at a residential treatment center that's been under state scrutiny because of allegations of abuse.

Emergency medical technicians were summoned Friday evening to the Daystar Facility in Manvel, about 25 miles south of Houston, where CPR already had been started on the boy. He then was taken by ambulance to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, the Brazoria County Sheriff's Department said.

In a brief statement issued Monday, the department said a preliminary investigation showed "restraint techniques were used to subdue the child."

The nature of the techniques was not detailed but the preliminary cause of death "is thought to be asphyxiation," the department said. The Harris County Medical Examiner's office will provide a more specific cause later, the sheriff's department said.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services assigned a state monitor to Daystar and refused to send foster children there after reports surfaced in June that some developmentally disabled girls at the center in 2008 were provoked into fighting to win after-school snacks. The fight, in April 2008, resulted in the firing of a supervisor and at least one other worker.

The boy who died was from Howard County in West Texas, was in the conservatorship of Child Protective Services and had been in state custody since June 4, 2008, agency spokesman Patrick Crimmins said Monday.

The death came a few days after the Department of Family and Protective Services informed Daystar management Nov. 1 its facility would be placed on probation because of "persistent concerns about the facility and the children in its care," Crimmins said.

Since June 11, the department has withheld placing foster children at Daystar. A special monitor was hired to work at the facility from June 21 until Sept. 30.

"We are going to do everything we can to find out exactly what happened, and if this death was, in any way, preventable," Anne Heiligenstein, the agency's commissioner, said. "We also are disappointed to be looking, yet again, at Daystar.

"We are going to ensure that this facility improves, quickly. Or, we are going to close it."

In a Nov. 5 letter to Daystar outlining the probation, Heiligenstein said Daystar "has a history of being placed on corrective action and then declining after it is lifted."

Daystar did not immediately return a telephone call Monday seeking comment.

Daystar Residential Inc. describes itself as an alternative to institutionalization. It offers services to "clients" between the ages of 3 and 22 who have pervasive developmental disorders, emotional disorders, are hearing impaired or mentally impaired.

---

Drug Laws Violated for Foster Kids

Drug Laws Violated for Foster Kids : Deeper Concerns

In the wake of a little boy's suicide and the admission by child welfare chiefs that they violated a 2005 law aimed at protecting kids from psychiatric-drug use, some Florida lawmakers suggest the death may be a symptom of deeper problems.


The 2005 law came about when Florida lawmakers became concerned that kids in foster care were being needlessly medicated to control "difficult" behavior.

On April 27, Sen. Ronda Storms, who chairs the Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee, wrote to DCF Secretary George Sheldon, ''This case raises serious concerns which demand attention and answers,'' Among the questions, she asked was, ``To what degree, if any, has the [department] ignored or circumvented . . . the 2005 law which curbed the use of psychotropic drugs in the treatment of our children in department care?''

A former lawmaker who authored the 2005 legislation, Walter G. ''Skip'' Campbell, who also chaired the children's committee, accused the DCF of ''cooking the numbers'' so as to make it look as if had curbed the use of mental health drugs to "manage" the behavior of unruly children.

In a report last September to the Florida Senate, the DCF claimed that less than 7percent (2,307!) foster kids were on such drugs. It also claimed that in almost all cases the agency had "received proper consent". But that report was based on figures from the DCF's internal database (known as the Florida Safe Families Network, or FSFN) long acknowledged by administrators to be unreliable.

In a memo as long ago as September 2006, the DCF's then-director of family safety, Patricia Badland, said DCF's computer system recorded that only 4 percent of children in the state's care were being given psychotropic drugs -- while a separate system kept by Medicaid said nearly 12 percent - three times as many - of foster children were on psychotropic medications...more

DC. Two More D.C. Juvenile Wards Slain. Death Toll: 7 wards slain, 10 wards charged with murder.

Two more young men who were committed to the D.C.’s youth justice agency have joined the District’s grim roll call in separate homicides this week, The Washington Examiner has learned.

DC. Two More D.C. Juvenile Wards Slain. Death Toll: 7 wards slain, 10 wards charged with murder.

David Hinson, 20, was shot dead Wednesday night in Capitol Heights. A few hours later and several miles away, Sean Robinson, 19, was gunned down on the 2500 block of Mozart Avenue NW.

Each man was a ward of the District’s long-troubled Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, a source familiar with their backgrounds told The Examiner.

Hinson’s juvenile record included arrests for destruction of property, unauthorized use of a vehicle, theft and assault, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because juvenile records are confidential.

Robinson had been arrested for weapons crimes, robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. He had recently escaped from the city’s custody and was on the run, the source said.more

D.C.’s Mayor Awards Ceremony for Rehabbed Youth Ends In Brawl

D.C.’s Mayor Awards Ceremony for Rehabbed Youth Ends In Brawl"

An awards ceremony recognizing good behavior by youth in the District’s juvenile justice system ended in a brawl and three arrests.

Mayor Adrian Fenty had just finished handing out the honors to the Department of Youth and Rehabilitation Services’ most successfully rehabilitated offenders when three of the girls got into an argument, according to law enforcement sources and police records.

Rhode Island: A Day Late, A Dollar Short On Oversight

I suppose these youth can be enjoined in the class action law suit against the state. Rhode Island just cannot seem to get it right when it comes to oversight of its contracts and operations.

Perhaps it has something to do with the status quo of the nation's child welfare accreditation system...

R.I. shuts down group home for teen boys in Johnston

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 14, 2010

By Lynn Arditi

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — State officials have shut down a group home for teenage boys in Johnston pending an investigation into allegations that the toilets and showers were not working and that some of the boys had been confined for hours inside a sweltering common room last week following a report that clothing was being stolen.

The problems were reported to the state Department of Children, Youth and Families by Rhode Island Child Advocate Jametta O. Alston after her office’s investigators received a tip and visited the group home, The Johnston House, on Greenville Avenue, last Thursday.

The investigators reported that in the middle of last week’s heat wave, five of the seven boys had been confined to a common room with no air conditioning — a claim that the group home’s chief executive denies —– in an effort to get the boys to confess about the theft of some clothing.

Toilets at the home also couldn’t be flushed and the bathrooms stank of backed-up waste, the child advocate’s office reported. And the showers were not functioning properly, so staff had been taking the boys to a local YMCA to shower.

The DCYF has placed the group home’s license on probation, as is done during any abuse and neglect investigation, and has moved all the boys into other group homes, the agency’s deputy director, Jorge Garcia, said Tuesday.

The Johnston House is operated by the Windsor, Conn.-based nonprofit operation Community Solutions Inc. The company’s chief executive officer, Robert D. Pidgeon, said Tuesday that his employees are cooperating with the DCYF in the investigation.

The Johnston House is one of 102 licensed residential facilities in the state operated by agencies that have contracts with the DCYF. Rhode Island currently has 324 youths in DCYF custody who are living in group homes, according to Garcia.

The state pays a per diem rate of $215.57 per bed to house up to eight teenage boys at the two-story house in Johnston, which has a staff of 12 to 15 people to care for and provide therapeutic services to boys with behavioral and emotional problems.

The problems at The Johnston House surfaced last Thursday when the state child advocate’s office — an independent agency created to serve as a watchdog over the state child-welfare system — received a call from a social worker who had a scheduled visit at The Johnston House last week. The social worker, Alston said, was accompanied by a DCYF employee.

Two investigators from the child advocate’s office visited the group home, Alston said, and interviewed the boys, who repeated the allegations.

“In order to get a confession, you have the children sitting still in a hot room,” she said. “That’s, to me, disturbing.”

Pidgeon, the group home operator’s chief executive, denied that the children were confined to one room.

“It would be impossible to confine them to a room because we don’t lock the doors,” he said. “They have free access to come and go in the building or on the grounds.”

The staff at The Johnston House had placed all but three newly arrived residents on “house restriction,” Pidgeon said, in hopes that one of them would confess to who was stealing clothing. House restriction means that the boys were confined to the house or the yard, he said, so they couldn’t go on trips to the movies or out for Chinese food. However, he said, they were free to move around the property. Their bedrooms had air conditioning, but not the dining room or living room, he said. The restrictions had been in place for 8½ days, he said.

“It’s not part of our policy to have restrictions that last that long,” Pidgeon said. “It just strikes me that’s a little too long.”

The Johnston House also had been having intermittent problems in recent months with its water pump, but it wasn’t until July 1 that the water pressure became so low that it restricted showering and staff began taking the boys to a local YMCA to shower.

“By July, you couldn’t take back-to-back showers [and] couldn’t flush the toilet,” Pidgeon said. “It’s not like they were ever out of water. They just didn’t have the water pressure they needed.”

The two-story house, built in 1920, has a gabled, clay tile roof and decorative glass doorways, but its original clapboards have been replaced with vinyl siding and the wood façade is worn.

The group home’s operator, Community Solutions, bought the house in 1997 through its real-estate arm, Collins Group Inc., for $210,000. At the time, Pidgeon said, the company owned a number of properties used for residential juvenile care. But since then, the company has moved away from residential services for juveniles to home-based care, and the Johnston house is one of the last three properties it owns. The others are a group home in Coventry and a safe house in Windsor, Conn.

Community Solutions operates in 14 states, including Rhode Island, and is accredited by the national nonprofit Council For the Accreditation of Residential Facilities.  (Actually, it it the Council On Accreditation) The DCYF’s Garcia said he could not recall ever having had a problem with the company’s facilities.

Last Friday, the water pump at the Johnston group home was replaced and the pressure problem resolved, Pidgeon, the company’s CEO, said. By then, the residents had been unable to flush the toilets or use the showers for eight days. The same day, investigators from the DCYF’s child protective services and licensing divisions showed up at the home and interviewed residents and staff. The DCYF ordered that the home be shut down and the boys move out pending completion of their investigation.

The group home’s staff has not been working since Friday, Pidgeon said, and is not being paid pending the results of the investigation.

“What was most disturbing to me was that the DCYF social worker [who visited Thursday] didn’t make the calls” to report the problems, Alston, the state’s child advocate, said.

DCYF social workers are required to conduct monthly on-site visits of all children the agency places in group homes, Garcia, the agency’s deputy director, said. However, he said, the plumbing problems at the Johnston home were not necessarily something that a DCYF employee would notice if he or she didn’t use the facilities during the visit.

“I’m not sure if some of those issues would have been obvious,” he said. 

"I'm not sure if the group home staff were provided proper, mandated, restraint training.  Probably not."

larditi@projo.com