Abuses found at foster homes

Abuse found in foster homes overseen by contractors


10:42 PM CDT on Saturday, April 16, 2005

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS and PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News

Private contractors that handle three-fourths of Texas' foster care have
placed children with foster parents who later abused, molested or
neglected them or even disappeared with kids in their care, records reveal.

Some contractors have failed to act for nearly a year after learning that
foster children were living with people with criminal records or in homes
with fire or safety hazards.

One contractor was investigated for sending a 14-month-old girl on a
breathing machine – who was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus and
bladder disease – to live with a foster mother who smoked.

The same organization placed "very medically fragile" children with a
woman who later admitted concealing a recent psychiatric hospitalization.
She also was a suspected drug user who, when requested, refused to take a
drug test or turn over medical records.

State legislators are poised to put all of Texas' 26,000 foster children –
victims of abuse, neglect or disintegrated families – in the hands of
private managers, either nonprofit groups or for-profit companies. Backers
say that's because private managers have shown they can keep children safe.

"They have proven, in those areas, to do a very good job," said state Sen.
Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, chief author of a plan that has passed the
Senate.

Told of The Dallas Morning News' findings, she added, "We've got to put
protections in place ... whether it's through private agencies or the
state."

But others say the state is moving too fast and that some plans,
especially one due for House debate this week, give private managers too
much power without enough state oversight. What's really needed, some say,
is a much tougher approach by state Child Protective Services in
investigating child abuse.

"The public's upset with CPS has all been about investigations," said F.
Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Priorities, an
Austin-based group that focuses on Texas child-welfare and related issues.
"We've got an investigative problem, but what we're addressing [in the
Legislature] is something else."

Child welfare

The News reviewed tens of thousands of pages of state files on foster care
contractors that either the newspaper or a state agency obtained through
open-records requests. Many details on abuse investigations aren't
available to the public, so the newspaper focused on contractors for which
the records it reviewed were most complete. It then chose some cases for a
closer look.

Whenever possible, The News compared those records with the much more
limited information that the Texas Department of Family and Protective
Services makes available to the public via an online database of foster
contractors' compliance histories.

The contractors recruit and train foster parents and place children in the
foster homes for the state after a judge puts a child in the state's care.
Then they oversee the foster parents' performance.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services regulates the
contractors and also directly supervises a quarter of the state's foster
care homes. Under the current system, the department is the case manager
for each foster child's overall welfare, whether the child is in a private
or a state foster home.

Contractors receive state payments for each child and pass on part of the
money to the foster parents for the children's general needs. In the
current fiscal year, contractors get $36 per child per day for basic care,
with the foster parent getting $20 of that.

Children with specialized needs, such as serious medical or emotional
problems, generate higher payments – $87.25 per child per day to the
contractor, $45 of that to the foster family. In addition, the state
covers all foster children's medical and dental bills.

Records show that after some serious violations by foster parents, such as
physical punishment, which isn't allowed, the contractors removed the
children and cut off the foster parents from future assignments. In other
instances, however, problem foster parents were allowed to keep working.

Either way, many serious problems never appear in the state's online
database of the contractors' compliance histories, which are supposed to
help the public judge the quality of foster care.

Foster care agencies say they work hard to make sure children are safe.
"We're not going to leave a child in a situation where there is risk to
the child," said Ron McDaniel, vice president of marketing for DePelchin
Children's Center of Houston. One of the state's largest foster care
providers, DePelchin oversees about 250 foster homes.

How safe Texas' foster children are, however, is hard to tell. The Texas
Department of Family and Protective Services, which includes Child
Protective Services, said last year that 96 percent were in safe homes.

But Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office found that the
figure "greatly overstates" foster child safety. For example, the figure
included only physical or sexual abuse or neglect by adults; it left out
child-on-child abuse in foster homes.

The 96 percent also omits instances in which the state didn't confirm
abuse or where it "administratively closed" cases without investigating.
The Department of Family and Protective Services has stopped the latter
practice.

In addition, the comptroller's office said it couldn't account for 250
children in November 2003, who were either missing from Texas foster care
or living in unapproved places. The department – long at odds with the
comptroller's office – disputes that figure and says it knows of no child
who cannot be found.

"We're not pretending we're doing an adequate job" at managing foster
care, said Darrell Azar, the department's spokesman. "We need more
resources to do it better."

'Minor violations'

In reviewing cases from 2002 to 2004, The News found that in addition to
keeping many violations away from public view, the department frequently
downplays the seriousness of abuse or neglect allegations. Records often
classify allegations of physical or sexual abuse or cruelty as minor
violations of minimum standards that pose a low risk to children.

One such allegation involved a 7-year-old foster child who told an adult
that his 11-year-old brother was sexually molesting him. In another, a
foster mother was allegedly disciplining a psychotic, suicidal 8-year-old
girl by taking her outside and telling her there were monsters in the
bushes. State records classified both as minor, low-risk situations.

An allegation that a 17-year-old male in a foster home had twice raped an
8-year-old girl in foster care was classified as a case of neglectful
supervision.

The records that The News reviewed concerned contractors ranging from
mainstays such as the 113-year-old DePelchin to newcomers such as
Dallas-based Youth in View, in business just four years.

The examined records include complaint and investigation reports and
licensing files and inspections on foster care providers. Some contractors
show up more often than others in the cases the newspaper reviewed, but
that might be because they handle more foster children.

Some documents are dry accounts of required record-keeping, a massive task
that forced Youth in View to stop accepting new foster children for
several months in 2003 while the fledgling contractor tried to correct
paperwork problems.

Others contain easily disproved allegations by disturbed or angry
children. One girl, for example, accused her foster father of sexual
abuse, but an investigation found that he was hospitalized for heart
surgery at the time of the alleged assault. She then changed the date of
the abuse to a time years before she entered the home.

Others are accounts of quick action that limited harm to children. One
case from 2002 involved two children whose foster parents physically and
mentally abused them and eventually ordered them to lie to cover up the
foster parents' role in a car crash.

The contractor, Cedar Ridge Foster Care, based in Lometa in Central Texas,
swiftly removed the children, investigated and cut off the parents from
any more foster work. The children's therapist, who had triggered the
action with a call to CPS, was "very complimentary" of Cedar Ridge's
response, a report said.

Often, however, the records reviewed by The News describe cases in which
foster care providers knew about problems but did not act.

In one such case, two foster families – not identified by name or location
in a 2004 report – were having their foster children assemble weapons in
the families' home-based gun store.

"All of the children work or spend at least 20 hours a week at the barn"
that housed the armory, according to a state report. "The children are
putting together and packing knives, gun magazines, etc. ... Many of the
kids reported that one night they worked until 2-4 a.m. in the morning
helping their [foster] dads complete an order."

A caseworker for the foster care contractor, New Horizons Ranch, based in
Brownwood, knew the children were working at the armory "because the
children told her," a state investigation found. After a tip triggered a
state inspection, the contractor removed the children and shut the foster
homes.

One problem, the inspector noted, was that the contractor's reports of its
home visits, meant to document conditions and reinforce the rules, seemed
to be copied verbatim from reports the parents themselves wrote and sent
in.

New Horizons' executive director, Del Barnett, said New Horizons knew
about the gun store when it approved the families as foster parents. New
Horizons also knew that the children were working there, he said. They
worked voluntarily and were paid more than minimum wage, he said. New
Horizons regularly checked the kids and the families and didn't find any
abuse in the kids' work at the gun store, he said.

The state inspection report said the children should never have been
allowed to work in such a place. "The [foster] facility director was told
that this is not an appropriate working place for children," the report
said. "It is against standards for children to be around these types of
items."

Mr. Barnett said New Horizons didn't object to that finding.

"It's just a question of whether a kid should be around a gun or not," he
said. "We might debate that both ways. It certainly could get out of hand,
and that's the danger. If it's a job and it's supervised, well, I don't
know. I'm not really trying to defend or not defend that."

New Horizons kicked the parents out of its foster program for unrelated
reasons in September 2003, six months before the state wrote its report,
he said. The families moved on to another foster care contractor, he said.

Almost no penalties

Except for cases listed as physical or sexual abuse, the state almost
always has the contractor investigate its own foster home. State officials
review the findings and the steps needed to fix the problem. If the state
concurs, it closes the case without any mention in the contractor's
public, online compliance record that the incident ever happened.

One such case in 2002 concerned a foster home operating through A World
for Children, based in the Austin suburb of Round Rock. The state received
complaints about the home over a five-week period.

Two foster children regularly had to change a younger child's diaper. Two
children went without needed glasses. The foster mother didn't always
provide school supplies. Children rode four-wheelers without helmets.

"One child had a bruise on her pubic bone and a swelling at the back of
the spine that were not explained," the state wrote to the contractor.

The contractor investigated and found the home deficient on a half-dozen
standards, including one barring "any harsh, cruel, unusual, unnecessary,
demeaning, or humiliating punishment." It kicked the foster parents out of
the program.

State officials concurred but took no action against the contractor,
despite a regulation saying the contractor has an ongoing duty to ensure
that foster parents obey the rules. The state's online database says only
that an investigation found no violations – no names or details.

The News found scores of similar cases involving various contractors.

Char Bateman, in charge of residential child-care licensing for the
Department of Family and Protective Services, said the state doesn't cite
a contractor for a foster parent's violation if the contractor handled the
case properly – for example, if it responded quickly and took the right
steps to correct the problem.

If the contractor mismanages the investigation, the contractor itself
might face a violation. The state also does routine inspections that look
at a sample of the contractor's files.

Even when the state cites the contractor for a violation, there's seldom a
penalty. That happened with a 2002 case in which a foster mother concealed
the presence in her home of a man with a known criminal record and the
contractor didn't act.

A worker for A World for Children had told the foster mother that the man,
who wasn't identified, couldn't be in the home. The mother then ordered
the foster children "not to tell the [contractor] staff that the man was
in the home."

The state found that the contractor had known about the problem for months
but didn't force the issue until CPS was tipped Sept. 24, 2002.

The state closed the case by citing two violations against A World for
Children. For each, the solution included a talk with the foster mother,
agreements that she wouldn't let the man back in the house and that she
wouldn't keep any more secrets, unannounced visits by supervisors, and
increased training for the contractor.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has no real police power
over the contractors, Ms. Bateman said. The department can boost
monitoring requirements and inspect more frequently, in serious cases can
tell a contractor to stop putting children in a home.

But it can't fine a contractor for poor performance. The final option,
revoking a contractor's license, is rarely used.

"Our philosophy is to try and help them succeed and do a good job," Ms.
Bateman said.

'Low risk'

It was often hard to tell from the reports how serious the problem was.
Records reviewed by The News classified all of the following as minor,
low-risk allegations that, under state policy, would give the state up
to15 days to launch an investigation:

A foster mother verbally abused the children, withheld water on a hot day,
withheld food as punishment, pushed a child into a van and drove 11
children in a van, forcing some to sit on the floorboards.

A 17-year-old foster child was found sitting by a trash container behind a
restaurant at night, "bleeding from her arms, crying and being obviously
upset." Apparently kicked out of the home by her foster mother, the girl
was cutting herself because it helped "get the pain out."

Four foster children, ages 11 to 14, were forced to take care of the
toddler of the foster mother's 20-year-old, methamphetamine-hooked
daughter.

A foster mother habitually went 14 hours between changing the diaper of a
12-year-old mentally retarded girl with cerebral palsy, eczema, scoliosis
and a reactive airway disease that forced the use of a tracheotomy tube.
The girl was developing a "skin breakdown" and blisters under her diaper.

Sometimes, state child-abuse hotline workers recommended a higher priority
and more serious category, only to have the final paperwork later reflect
lower, less serious risk. That's what happened in the allegation that a
foster mother had tried at least three times to get her mother-in-law to
give her some prescription Valium and Xanax to medicate a 10-year-old boy.

The hotline worker recommended labeling the case medical neglect, priority
2, which would call for a response within 10 days. The child "is
accessible to [the foster mother] and is unprotected," the worker wrote.

However, the official "intake" report called the case a minor violation,
priority 3, the classification for low risk to a child – giving the state
five additional days to start an investigation.

Abuse or neglect allegations are supposed to be the highest urgency,
priority 1, requiring an investigation within 24 hours, Ms. Bateman said.
Each new report is reviewed by one of three investigation supervisors to
make sure it's been given the right priority, she said.

However, if that review isn't done within 24 hours, the state risks
violating its own time limit for investigating abuse complaints.

Ms. Bateman said the supervisors upgrade cases into more urgent categories
more often than they downgrade them to lower priorities. The News found
one such case in the files it reviewed.

In July 2004, the Department of Family and Protective Services started
checking samples of intake reports to make sure cases were given the right
priority, said Mr. Azar, the department spokesman.

No results are available yet, he said.

Another "minor, low-risk" case stirred concerns by police in McAllen.

On Sept. 18, 2003, two children in a McAllen foster home overseen by A
World for Children were being moved to a temporary home while the foster
mother was hospitalized. However, one child, a 13-year-old girl, ran away
before being moved.

According to the other child, the foster mother's 30-year-old son was
living in the house and had started buying the girl gifts and giving her
"a lot of attention,"

While investigating the girl's disappearance, a McAllen detective learned
something else about the foster mother's son: Two months earlier, a
security guard had caught him in his car in a shopping mall parking lot,
videotaping girls without their knowledge.

A police officer who responded watched the tape and saw that it contained
shots of girls at the mall, a Target store and McAllen High School,
"zooming in on their breast and buttocks area."

The officer didn't arrest the son because he didn't know that a new state
law made it a crime to secretly taping someone for sexual purposes. Still,
the detective who was looking for the runaway girl "was wondering why [the
son] was allowed to live with [the foster mother] in a foster home."

All that information was available when the state classified it as a
minor, low-risk case.

The News did not find the son's name in Texas' sex-offender and criminal
convictions records. Sgt. Mike Zellers of the McAllen Police Department
said he couldn't find a report of the incident, but he added that his
small department gets from 75 to 100 referrals from CPS each month.

Neither the documents themselves nor the McAllen police could determine if
the girl ever came home.
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