Link here
By R.G. Ratcliffe - Express-News
AUSTIN — During a year of “fight clubs” at a state school for the mentally disabled, deaths from neglect and abuse at others and a federal crackdown on Texas, the agency charged with managing the problem apparently was in turmoil of its own.
According to an investigative report obtained by the San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle, the headquarters staff of the state school system had a turnover of two-thirds in an eight-month period and the director was suspended for treating her employees in a “demeaning and abusive manner.”
Denice Geredine, director of the state school system, was suspended for five days last April after the Department of Aging and Disability Services found she had created a “hostile” work environment by berating staff and publicly reprimanding her employees.
Geredine's division had a 67 percent employee turnover from July 2008, when she became supervisor, through last February.
The agency also investigated Geredine's boss, Assistant Commissioner Barry Waller, for a “demeaning manner in the workplace” for allegedly yelling at employees. No formal action was taken involving Waller.
Geredine currently is on leave due to two deaths in her family. Her husband, Thomas, defended her actions as supervisor during a difficult period.
“She was just trying to make a difference,” Thomas Geredine said. “She was just trying to hold people accountable. When you hold people accountable, they turn on you.”
Agency spokeswoman Laura Albrecht said DADS commissioners continue to monitor and evaluate Geredine's conduct.
“Many times when you are correcting problems and implementing changes, there will be challenges,” Albrecht said.
Most of the focus on problems in the state school system has been on the 13 facilities around Texas and undertrained staffers who earn about $20,000 a year.
But the investigative document obtained by the newspapers under the Texas Public Information Act raises questions about how firmly the state headquarters has been overseeing the system.
The U.S. Justice Department of last December announced that 53 of 114 deaths of state school residents in a one-year period could have been prevented. The state signed an agreement with department officials in May, pledging to spend $112 million over the next five years to improve standards of care.
In March, videos surfaced allegedly showing Corpus Christi State School staff members forcing mentally disabled residents into fights for entertainment. Jury selection began Monday in a trial of the first of six employees charged in the case.
Under an emergency declaration this year from Gov. Rick Perry, the Legislature passed laws to reorganize the state school system and add more than 1,000 employees for direct services for the mentally disabled.
One of the chief sponsors of that legislation, Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, only learned this week from a reporter that Geredine had been suspended and that there had been high headquarters turnover.
Nelson's legislation will eliminate Geredine's job and replace it with an assistant commissioner over state schools with a facilities manager below that position.
Of the 22-member staff positions under Geredine's management in February, a majority described her as “unprofessional, bullying, abrasive” and a majority described their work environment as “stressful, hostile, a roller coaster ride of manic to calm, crisis driven.”
The report said Geredine required her staff to work on weekends or cancel sick leave without pay. Geredine said those staffers would “volunteer to rearrange their time off.”
The employees said that because of the high employee turnover rate, “the wealth of knowledge and experience ... is gone and not being replaced.”
Geredine said her bosses had an expectation that she would “turn over” the staff because there had been low performers in the unit. Geredine said she was proud of the turnover in her staff.
Showing posts with label San Antonio State School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Antonio State School. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Justice Department, state agree to improve conditions at mental facilities
AUSTIN — The state has reached an agreement with the Justice Department to toughen safety standards at Texas’ residential facilities for the mentally disabled, concluding a four-year investigation of abuses and mistreatment.
"The settlement brings much-needed closure to a sad chapter in our state’s history," said state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, chairwoman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
"Abuse and neglect of our most vulnerable citizens must never be tolerated," she said.
Nelson, who is sponsoring legislation to improve oversight at the facilities, known as state schools, said the agreement includes independent monitors to inspect the state schools regularly; new standards for medical and psychological care; safeguards to detect and deter exploitation; and strengthened guidelines for employees’ treatment of inmates.
The improvements are expected to cost the state $112 million over the next five years. The price tag would include $51.2 million that the Legislature would have to add to the state budget for the 2010-11 biennium.
Focus on state agency
A Justice Department report presented to Gov. Rick Perry in December said residents are often victims of abuse, neglect and inadequate medical treatment. At least 53 residents died within the past year because of lapses in healthcare, the report concluded.
The investigation centered on the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, which operates 13 large facilities, including one in Denton that houses nearly 5,000 residents.
On Tuesday, the state House, acting on a resolution by Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, voted to permit the family of a resident at the Denton school to sue the state for injuries received nearly seven years ago. Haseeb Chishty was left paralyzed and unable to eat on his own, the family said.
In a letter to Nelson on Wednesday, Deputy Texas Attorney General David S. Morales confirmed that the Justice Department had agreed to a "statewide settlement" stemming from its investigation.
Justice Department and state officials also agreed to file documents in U.S. District Court in Travis County to make the agreement legally binding.
The agreement resulted from discussions between the Justice Department, Perry’s office, the Texas attorney general and Aging and Disability Services officials, according to the letter.
'Emergency’ status
Nelson said she will file a resolution today approving the points of the settlement. Her Senate committee and the House Human Services Committee will meet jointly Friday to review the agreement.
Perry gave Nelson’s Senate Bill 643 "emergency" status at the outset of the legislative session to expedite passage. It was the first bill to pass the Senate; the House approved it Tuesday.
A key element of the bill would create a govern-appointed ombudsman to audit the facilities biannually and be a confidential intermediary for parents, clients and guardians.
The bill would also create a hot line for reporting abuse, neglect and misconduct; mandate surveillance cameras in common areas; and require drug tests, fingerprinting and background checks on employees. Investigations uncovered employees who had criminal records.
The settlement brings much-needed closure to a sad chapter in our state’s history."
State Sen. Jane NelsonR-Flower Mound
DAVE MONTGOMERY, 512-476-4294
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Agreement reached to improve state schools for mentally disabled
07:46 PM CDT on Wednesday, May 20, 2009
AUSTIN — The state has reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to improve conditions inside Texas’ state schools for the mentally disabled. Under the agreement, Texas must spend $112 million more over five years to improve standards of care, increase monitoring and oversight, and enhance staffing ratios at the facilities.
Lawmakers will reveal the details in a Friday morning hearing with the commissioner of the agency that oversees the schools and the state’s lead negotiator in the deal. Both the House and Senate must pass resolutions concurring with the deal before their session ends June 1.
The agreement calls for spending nearly $45 million in the next two years. If the money is spent and conditions improve, the oversight would be lifted in five years.
“Whether or not the Department of Justice told us this, we needed to be doing these things,” said Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound. “We are hoping and expecting these facilities will very quickly get up to standard.”
Nelson leads the Senate committee overseeing the state Health and Human services Commission. Her panel will hold a joint hearing with its House counterpart, led by Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs, Friday to outline the deal.
The agreement follows a federal investigation last year that found widespread civil-rights violations across all 13 state institutions and years of media reports about abuse and neglect inside the facilities.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Texas House approves measures to prevent abuse at state schools for disabled
Be sure to go to the original story and check out the wonderful comments.
05:17 PM CDT on Monday, May 18, 2009AUSTIN – Texas’ services for people with disabilities, beset by allegations of abuse and neglect, would face far greater scrutiny and security under a measure the House gave early approval to on Monday.
The bill, designed to prevent mistreatment in the state schools for the disabled, is a response to a U.S. Justice Department investigation that turned up widespread civil rights violations inside Texas’ 13 institutions. The version the House considered Monday expands the reforms to community group homes, private institutions and independent foster homes. It awaits a final vote before returning to the Senate.
“The state needs to be proactive in making sure that we take care of our state’s most vulnerable population,” said Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Corpus Christi. “This bill should be the beginning of the state finally meeting its legal, ethical and moral obligation.”
The measure, one of Gov. Rick Perry’s emergency priorities, calls for posting surveillance cameras in all state schools, and performing background checks, fingerprinting and random drug tests on all employees. It also creates a toll free abuse hotline and installs an ombudsman to oversee abuse allegations. The state school-specific bill passed the Senate.
The House version expands these changes to include community-based care. It requires annual inspections of group homes and ensures state officials investigate abuse allegations in private care facilities, not just state schools. It also calls for a review of all deaths in private care facilities and group homes.
Other details in the bill:
• It strengthens the role of the inspector general in investigating abuse and neglect allegations.
• It calls for the ombudsman to perform audits at individual state schools every other year.
• It increases staff training requirements.
• It changes the name of the state schools to “state supported living centers.”
• It sets aside a specific state institution for alleged criminal offenders who need heightened supervision.
“We’ve made it safer to be living in our state schools,” Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman said. “And we’ve made it safer to be living in our communities if you have cognitive disabilities.”
Thursday, March 26, 2009
San Antonio State School worker fired for sexual abuse
By John Tedesco and Karisa King - Express-News
An employee at the San Antonio State School was fired in December after he forced a male resident with mental retardation to perform a sex act on a male resident who also had mental disabilities, according to a state investigation.
The Department of Aging and Disability Services, the agency that oversees Texas' 13 state schools, substantiated the allegations against the employee, who had been hired on a probationary basis in August 2008.
“I can say with absolute certainty that this is not tolerated,” DADS spokeswoman Cecilia Fedorov said. “This is not acceptable in any way to this agency.”
The sexual abuse occurred during a Nov. 30 lunch outing in a van, according to the state's investigation.
Two state-school employees took a group of residents to the drive-through of a barbecue restaurant to grab lunch, and they went to a roadside picnic area to eat.
After lunch, it took about five minutes to get everyone together. One employee was outside the van assisting a resident. The other employee was in the van with at least three mentally disabled residents.
At that point, according to the report, the employee in the van physically forced a resident in the back seat to perform oral sex on another resident.
“I didn't want to,” one of the victims told an investigator. “He made me do it, punched me in the stomach, told me to do it.”
A resident who had been sitting in the front seat later said he was thinking to himself: “Those poor people.”
He said the state-school employee warned everyone in the van that he would break their necks if they told anyone.
The sex act was over by the time the second employee got in the van, according to the report. He heard someone say, “You made me do it.”
The group returned to the San Antonio State School and the employee who had been outside the van told a colleague that during the outing, “Something sexual happened.”
He said he didn't know exactly what happened, and remarked: “I don't want to know.”
The names of the people on the outing and their ages were deleted from the investigatory report, which was released through a request under the Texas Public Information Act.
State officials declined to provide the age of the victims for privacy reasons. The investigatory report indicates both victims might have been teenagers or in their early 20s.
The taxpayer-funded state-school system cares for more than 4,700 adults and children with mental retardation. The same month DADS opened an investigation of the sex-abuse allegation, the Justice Department told Gov. Rick Perry that the state schools are failing to protect vulnerable residents from harm.
On March 10, Corpus Christi police said they obtained mobile-phone videos of “fight club”-style altercations between residents that were organized by employees of the state school there. Beth Mitchell, managing attorney with Advocacy Inc., a federally funded group that protects people with disabilities, said the San Antonio and Corpus Christi cases result from a culture of abuse in the state schools. She said the cases are similar because, in both instances, staff members incited residents to harm each other, and employees who witnessed the abuse failed to report it.
A resident at the state school reported the incident.
“I don't know when the State of Texas is going to get the message clearly enough that these aren't isolated situations,” said Mitchell, who has asked lawmakers to halt admissions to the schools.
For parents like Nancy Ward, whose 47-year-old daughter lives at the Denton State School and is unable to speak, the allegations of abuse pose alarming concerns.
“It's a worry whenever you have to see this and realize that your children are there,” said Ward, who also is a member of Parent Association for the Retarded of Texas, a statewide group that supports the schools.
While others view the recently publicized cases of abuse as reasons to close the schools, Ward said the San Antonio case bolsters the argument for lawmakers to increase funding for the facilities to attract better employees.
“I hope that all these things that are happening will show that we need more monitoring and we need the resources to do the job,” she said.
The case is rare because state investigators almost never confirm allegations of sexual abuse.
Last year, the Department of Family and Protective Services, which also investigates abuse and neglect at the state schools, recorded nearly 870 allegations of sexual abuse statewide.
Of those allegations, investigators confirmed only three cases.
During the investigation of the Nov. 30 incident, officials were alerted to other allegations against the employee who was accused of instigating the sex act.
He was accused of forcing a resident to eat shaving cream. In another case, the employee was accused of spraying a can of deodorant in the face of resident in a shower. And in a third case, he allegedly put a resident in a chokehold.
All three incidents were alleged to have occurred at the state school after Nov. 30, the day of the lunch outing.
Fedorov said the employee was fired Dec. 30 at the conclusion of DADS' investigation.
The employee who'd been outside the van was placed on probation for a year. Fedorov said probationary employees can be fired for any reason, and he was later “let go.”
She said state-school employees undergo a criminal background check before they are hired, and officials check registries that track allegations of misconduct against healthcare workers. Fedorov said the background checks found no red flags for the employee accused of abusing the residents.
“It's really not a question of the screening process,” Fedorov said. “If you look at any business — especially a 24-hour care setting — you're going to find that there are bad people in the world who will take advantage of more vulnerable people.”
She emphasized that state schools have a “zero-tolerance” policy when abusers are discovered.
“It's really important that people understand that our top priority is the health and safety and the quality of life of the residents we serve,” Fedorov said.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Abuse At Texas Institutions Is Beyond 'Fight Club'
Todd Yates
Staff members at Corpus Christi State School in Texas have been charged with staging a late-night "fight club," using residents with mental retardation. AP/The Caller-Times
Morning Edition, March 18, 2009 · At a state institution for people with mental retardation in Texas, six staff members have been charged with taking part in staging what have been called human cockfights, using residents with mental retardation. The accusations have raised questions about how workers trained and hired to care for some of the most vulnerable people in society could instead treat them with cruelty.
The fights became known only because one of the workers lost his cell phone. It was found and turned over to an off-duty police officer. The phone had videos of more than a year of staged late-night fights, some as recent as this past January.
Cell Phone Evidence
Corpus Christi Police Capt. Tim Wilson says the videos showed a "lot of pushing, shoving and (in) several of the videos, there were punches thrown, and in one video we have a worker kicking one of the clients." Wilson says one staffer narrated the fights, and those involved can be seen clearly on the videos. "I'm pretty appalled. I mean, these workers are supposed to be caring for these people, and here they are exploiting them for their own entertainment," Wilson says. He says the youngest residents with disabilities appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s, and the oldest in their 40s. "These are severely mentally challenged adults," says Wilson. Several were hurt or bruised, although none apparently required hospitalization. In response, Texas state officials announced steps last week to prevent more abuse, including adding supervisors to evening shifts and installing security cameras in public areas at all 13 state institutions for people with intellectual disabilities. "We will continue to take swift and immediate action when abuse and neglect is reported," Addie Horn, who runs the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, pledged in a letter to the public last week. Four of the workers accused of abuse at Corpus Christi were fired. The other two had already quit. Attempts by NPR to contact them were unsuccessful. A History Of Abuse Still, there's been a long, recent history of abuse at Texas institutions. Just last Friday, a 53-year-old woman died of a head injury after being hit by another resident in a hallway collision at a facility in Denton. State officials say it was an accident. A county coroner ruled it a homicide. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated abuse at Texas institutions. Now, it's negotiating with the state to increase staff and make other changes. The Justice Department found there had been 450 cases of abuse over just the previous year. And in four years, more than 800 state employees had been suspended or fired. Beth Mitchell, an attorney at Advocacy Inc., a state legal group set up by Congress to protect people with disabilities, says one problem is that staffers get little training and often work in isolated areas. "These are large institutions that are in rural areas. The staff only need a GED or high school education. They get paid extremely minimum wages — $22,000 a year — and they don't get much training," she says. Mitchell's law center has been pressuring Texas officials to move residents out of the institutions and into smaller group homes. She thinks there's something about the impersonal nature of large institutions that breeds abuse. Researcher Dick Sobsey, who studies violence against people with disabilities at the University of Alberta in Canada, agrees. "There's really sometimes peer pressure for people to engage in abuse," says Sobsey. Although many good, caring people come to work at institutions, he says some cruel ones come, too. And they can sort of infect other workers. "Where some employees are abusive and others are not, the ones who are not abusive, there's always a danger that they're going to report the ones who are. If everybody's abusive, then everybody's hands are dirty, and so they're safe with each other," Sobsey says. Sobsey says this is more likely to go on at facilities that are in out-of-the-way places or out of the public eye. In Corpus Christi, the alleged abuse was on the late-night shift, when staff levels were low. Sobsey says one way to reduce abuse is to make institutions smaller and link them to communities such as families and churches. That way, they're less isolated and more people are watching.Related NPR Stories
March 12, 2009'Fight Club' For Disabled Causes Firestorm In TexasMarch 7, 2008Remembering An Infamous New York InstitutionSep. 16, 2007Program Preps Disabled Youth For Life On Their Own
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