Local child welfare advocates to meet over assessments issue

Local child welfare advocates to meet over assessments issue
By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN,
March 15, 2004

The terse memorandum blind-sided local child welfare advocates. It
said they would no longer prepare comprehensive assessments, intense
psychological profiles used to examine hundreds of the region's most
troubled children every year and determine further treatment.

The assessments would instead soon be conducted by Suncoast
Psychometrics, a company of three full-time employees in Sarasota. In
the first paragraph of the Feb. 23 memo, the CEO of Camelot Community
Care, the not-for-profit agency that now runs Southwest Florida's
child welfare system, wrote that the massive change came from a desire
to "provide services in a more efficient and timely manner."

Yet state data show that Suncoast Psychometrics has by far the worst
track record of any certified provider in the region for promptly
completing comprehensive behavioral health assessments.

Because of the pressure to help abused or neglected children who have
been removed from their families and often placed in shelters,
comprehensive assessments are required to be finished 24 days after
they are assigned. Failure to do a thorough job in time could
jeopardize a child because an assessment is used as a blueprint for
most additional care.

Between December 2001 and January 2003, Suncoast turned in just 5 of
53 assessments on time in the area. It turned in 41 assessments late
during that period, on an average of 26 days after the deadline. Other
providers completed dozens of assessments on time.

No other local provider came within 20 percent of Suncoast's 77
percent lateness rate, according to Department of Children and
Families records. Suncoast's tardiness became so endemic by the fall
of 2003 that its head told state officials not to assign any more
assessments in the region he may now oversee—his company could not do
them soon enough.

Camelot officials said they would meet this morning with local child
welfare advocates who criticized the potential Suncoast contract.
Camelot CEO Harry Propper said he wanted to talk to the other groups
before taking any big step, adding that a contract with Suncoast was
no longer certain, though it was "still a possibility."

His judgment will impact the 1,700 children who enter the child
welfare system in Southwest Florida every year, many of whom need a
comprehensive assessment, an in-depth analysis of nearly every aspect
of a vulnerable child's school and home life. Such an assessment can
require interviews with teachers, deadbeat dads, drug-addicted mothers
and traumatized kids; Medicaid pays agencies $48.50 an hour and most
assessments take about 20 hours to do.

The thousands of hours of work needed to conduct the assessments for
hundreds of children would require Suncoast Psychometrics, with its
three employees, to hire more than a dozen others.

Given its importance and rigor, an assessment can only be completed by
those with specialized training such as psychologists, psychiatrists
and mental health counselors, according to government regulations.
There are currently 18 certified assessors in Southwest Florida
scattered among six child welfare organizations such as The Ruth
Cooper Center, The David Lawrence Center and The Children's Advocacy
Center, according to state records.

"We have plenty of qualified assessors here and I would hate to lose
that," said Pamela Baker, a program administrator for Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services in the region who helped oversee them.

The decision on who can perform the assessments is Camelot's first
major one since beginning a five-year, $97 million contract with the
Department of Children and Families in February. It is also emblematic
in many ways of how the renovation of Southwest Florida's child
welfare system has often thrown its central tenets of efficiency and
local control in conflict.

Gov. Jeb Bush hopes to privatize social services throughout the state,
maintaining that networks of community nonprofits work better than
government bureaucracies. Critics complain, though, that several of
Camelot's other moves so far seem intended to diminish local nonprofit
organizations and increase its own corporate control.

Camelot is largely run by the Providence Service Corp., a Tucson-based
company listed on the NASDAQ that gets 10 percent of its contract
amounts; Providence executives occupy two of the five seats on
Camelot's Board of Directors, including the chair.

Child welfare advocates blame corporate considerations for Camelot's
selection of Family Preservation Services, a for-profit, wholly owned
subsidiary of the Providence Service Corp., as a case management
organization for Collier, Hendry and Glades. The designation would
give Family Preservation Services near-total control over guiding
children who have received assessments to the proper programs.

The Ruth Cooper Center will be the case manager for north Lee and
Charlotte counties and Lutheran Services handles the rest of Lee. The
chairman of Camelot's board tried to push a policy that would restrict
the growth of Lutheran Services and funnel some of its business to
Family Preservation Services, but Camelot officials backed down after
opposition from a state panel evaluating privatization.

The dispute over Suncoast Psychometrics is the latest chapter in this
lengthening battle over how the region's child welfare system will be
run. It is also the one with the biggest implications for the area's
most vulnerable children since it impacts every battered and neglected
child in Collier, Lee, Hendry, Glades and Charlotte counties.

Camelot officials said they had originally intended to award an
exclusive contract to Suncoast Psychometrics because they wanted to
streamline the process. If the assessments were done by just one
company, Propper said, it would be easier for Camelot to monitor
results.

He listed another advantage: Donald McMurray of Suncoast and his
associate James Kolarik were both Ph.Ds, so they could perform
additional psychological evaluations on the children who needed them
as well as comprehensive assessments.

Also, Propper said that Suncoast would only be doing evaluations on
children and not offering any other services. This policy, he
explained, would prevent a conflict of interest that inflicted other
providers. Suncoast could not refer clients they evaluated for
behavioral or psychological problems to another arm of their
organization for treatment, he said.

"We want to avoid those conflicts," Propper said. "In our analysis,
he, Dr. McMurray, was the one left standing."

But Pamela Baker, who helped oversee the assessments for the state
before privatization, said she did not witness such conflict of
interest questions. "It was never a problem," she said.

She pointed out that the behavioral assessments only recommended
further care; they did not say where the child should get it. That
determination was made by the child's case manager.

David Schimmel, the head of The David Lawrence Center, called the
conflict of interest concern "nonsense," citing similar information.
But he and other child welfare organizations said they still had hoped
to work with Camelot and that a meeting would help.

In an interview, McMurray conceded his problems in completing
assessments on time and expressed his sympathy with the worries of
other child welfare organizations.

"Any time any system changes, it creates tensions, or rumors or
whatever," he said.

When he first began providing comprehensive assessments, McMurray
said, he had trouble getting in touch with foster care parents and
others. He eventually got somewhat better. But in the fall of 2003,
McMurray asked to no longer be given assessments, telling DCF
officials that his strict schedule did not give him time to do the
intensive legwork needed to complete one in 24 days.

Dan England, the current operations manager for The Children's Network
of Southwest Florida, Camelot's local setup, said he had given
McMurray tips on how to do the assessments when he helped run the
program for the state.

"He was having trouble getting in touch with people" in 2001, England
said. He improved his promptness, England recalled, but began having
lateness problems again in 2003.

Several local child welfare advocates said in interviews that lateness
could be a result of McMurray working out of a small office in
Sarasota. They add that it requires local street smarts as well as
rigorous training to do these assessments promptly and thoroughly.

McMurray said that he traveled frequently to the area and planned to
hire many employees with experience in counties like Lee and Collier.
If Suncoast won the contract, he said, he would be mostly a
supervisor. He has run two community mental health centers and worked
as a university administrator.

A contract with Camelot is nearly complete, McMurray said. He is ready
to sign it anytime.

"We would very much like to do this contract," he said, "and we can do
it very well."
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/news/...729883,00.html
Defend your civil liberties! Get information at http://www.aclu.org, become a member at http://www.aclu.org/join and get active at http://www.aclu.org/action.

The bigger the NASDAQ listed assessment company is , the more juice to pass
along to buddies.

....Hm......what's their symbol? PSCC?

Think it's four letters for Nasdaq.


She pointed out that the behavioral assessments only recommended
further care; they did not say where the child should get it. That
determination was made by the child's case manager.

Wouldn't it be the parent's or guardian's choice?

Several local child welfare advocates said in interviews that lateness
could be a result of McMurray working out of a small office in
Sarasota. They add that it requires local street smarts as well as
rigorous training to do these assessments promptly and thorough

3 employees for 5 counties? Gotta outsource these interviews.

Wex found:

Subject: Local child welfare advocates to meet over assessments issue
From: wexwimpy
Date: 3/16/2004 10:02 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

Local child welfare advocates to meet over assessments issue
By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN,
March 15, 2004

The terse memorandum blind-sided local child welfare advocates. It
said they would no longer prepare comprehensive assessments, intense
psychological profiles used to examine hundreds of the region's most
troubled children every year and determine further treatment.

The assessments would instead soon be conducted by Suncoast
Psychometrics, a company of three full-time employees in Sarasota. In
the first paragraph of the Feb. 23 memo, the CEO of Camelot Community
Care, the not-for-profit agency that now runs Southwest Florida's
child welfare system, wrote that the massive change came from a desire
to "provide services in a more efficient and timely manner."

Yet state data show that Suncoast Psychometrics has by far the worst
track record of any certified provider in the region for promptly
completing comprehensive behavioral health assessments.

Because of the pressure to help abused or neglected children who have
been removed from their families and often placed in shelters,
comprehensive assessments are required to be finished 24 days after
they are assigned. Failure to do a thorough job in time could
jeopardize a child because an assessment is used as a blueprint for
most additional care.

Between December 2001 and January 2003, Suncoast turned in just 5 of
53 assessments on time in the area. It turned in 41 assessments late
during that period, on an average of 26 days after the deadline. Other
providers completed dozens of assessments on time.

No other local provider came within 20 percent of Suncoast's 77
percent lateness rate, according to Department of Children and
Families records. Suncoast's tardiness became so endemic by the fall
of 2003 that its head told state officials not to assign any more
assessments in the region he may now oversee—his company could not do
them soon enough.

Camelot officials said they would meet this morning with local child
welfare advocates who criticized the potential Suncoast contract.
Camelot CEO Harry Propper said he wanted to talk to the other groups
before taking any big step, adding that a contract with Suncoast was
no longer certain, though it was "still a possibility."

His judgment will impact the 1,700 children who enter the child
welfare system in Southwest Florida every year, many of whom need a
comprehensive assessment, an in-depth analysis of nearly every aspect
of a vulnerable child's school and home life. Such an assessment can
require interviews with teachers, deadbeat dads, drug-addicted mothers
and traumatized kids; Medicaid pays agencies $48.50 an hour and most
assessments take about 20 hours to do.

The thousands of hours of work needed to conduct the assessments for
hundreds of children would require Suncoast Psychometrics, with its
three employees, to hire more than a dozen others.

Given its importance and rigor, an assessment can only be completed by
those with specialized training such as psychologists, psychiatrists
and mental health counselors, according to government regulations.
There are currently 18 certified assessors in Southwest Florida
scattered among six child welfare organizations such as The Ruth
Cooper Center, The David Lawrence Center and The Children's Advocacy
Center, according to state records.

"We have plenty of qualified assessors here and I would hate to lose
that," said Pamela Baker, a program administrator for Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services in the region who helped oversee them.

The decision on who can perform the assessments is Camelot's first
major one since beginning a five-year, $97 million contract with the
Department of Children and Families in February. It is also emblematic
in many ways of how the renovation of Southwest Florida's child
welfare system has often thrown its central tenets of efficiency and
local control in conflict.

Gov. Jeb Bush hopes to privatize social services throughout the state,
maintaining that networks of community nonprofits work better than
government bureaucracies. Critics complain, though, that several of
Camelot's other moves so far seem intended to diminish local nonprofit
organizations and increase its own corporate control.

Camelot is largely run by the Providence Service Corp., a Tucson-based
company listed on the NASDAQ that gets 10 percent of its contract
amounts; Providence executives occupy two of the five seats on
Camelot's Board of Directors, including the chair.

Child welfare advocates blame corporate considerations for Camelot's
selection of Family Preservation Services, a for-profit, wholly owned
subsidiary of the Providence Service Corp., as a case management
organization for Collier, Hendry and Glades. The designation would
give Family Preservation Services near-total control over guiding
children who have received assessments to the proper programs.

The Ruth Cooper Center will be the case manager for north Lee and
Charlotte counties and Lutheran Services handles the rest of Lee. The
chairman of Camelot's board tried to push a policy that would restrict
the growth of Lutheran Services and funnel some of its business to
Family Preservation Services, but Camelot officials backed down after
opposition from a state panel evaluating privatization.

The dispute over Suncoast Psychometrics is the latest chapter in this
lengthening battle over how the region's child welfare system will be
run. It is also the one with the biggest implications for the area's
most vulnerable children since it impacts every battered and neglected
child in Collier, Lee, Hendry, Glades and Charlotte counties.

Camelot officials said they had originally intended to award an
exclusive contract to Suncoast Psychometrics because they wanted to
streamline the process. If the assessments were done by just one
company, Propper said, it would be easier for Camelot to monitor
results.

He listed another advantage: Donald McMurray of Suncoast and his
associate James Kolarik were both Ph.Ds, so they could perform
additional psychological evaluations on the children who needed them
as well as comprehensive assessments.

Also, Propper said that Suncoast would only be doing evaluations on
children and not offering any other services. This policy, he
explained, would prevent a conflict of interest that inflicted other
providers. Suncoast could not refer clients they evaluated for
behavioral or psychological problems to another arm of their
organization for treatment, he said.

"We want to avoid those conflicts," Propper said. "In our analysis,
he, Dr. McMurray, was the one left standing."

But Pamela Baker, who helped oversee the assessments for the state
before privatization, said she did not witness such conflict of
interest questions. "It was never a problem," she said.

She pointed out that the behavioral assessments only recommended
further care; they did not say where the child should get it. That
determination was made by the child's case manager.

David Schimmel, the head of The David Lawrence Center, called the
conflict of interest concern "nonsense," citing similar information.
But he and other child welfare organizations said they still had hoped
to work with Camelot and that a meeting would help.

In an interview, McMurray conceded his problems in completing
assessments on time and expressed his sympathy with the worries of
other child welfare organizations.

"Any time any system changes, it creates tensions, or rumors or
whatever," he said.

When he first began providing comprehensive assessments, McMurray
said, he had trouble getting in touch with foster care parents and
others. He eventually got somewhat better. But in the fall of 2003,
McMurray asked to no longer be given assessments, telling DCF
officials that his strict schedule did not give him time to do the
intensive legwork needed to complete one in 24 days.

Dan England, the current operations manager for The Children's Network
of Southwest Florida, Camelot's local setup, said he had given
McMurray tips on how to do the assessments when he helped run the
program for the state.

"He was having trouble getting in touch with people" in 2001, England
said. He improved his promptness, England recalled, but began having
lateness problems again in 2003.

Several local child welfare advocates said in interviews that lateness
could be a result of McMurray working out of a small office in
Sarasota. They add that it requires local street smarts as well as
rigorous training to do these assessments promptly and thoroughly.

McMurray said that he traveled frequently to the area and planned to
hire many employees with experience in counties like Lee and Collier.
If Suncoast won the contract, he said, he would be mostly a
supervisor. He has run two community mental health centers and worked
as a university administrator.

A contract with Camelot is nearly complete, McMurray said. He is ready
to sign it anytime.

"We would very much like to do this contract," he said, "and we can do
it very well."
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/news/...729883,00.html
Defend your civil liberties! Get information at http://www.aclu.org, become
a member at http://www.aclu.org/join and get active at
http://www.aclu.org/action.







http://www.familyrightsassociation.com

Network with other FL residents over DCF there.