Monday, June 26, 2006
Flight Schools Fight Background Checks
A bill that's been lurking under the legislative radar in New York for almost four years has been revived by the state Senate and will hurt the flight training industry there, according to local schools and pilot organizations. In 2002, New York, like many other states, thought it prudent to step into federal jurisdiction by trying to institute background checks on student pilots. As protests grew and federal regulations came into play, most states simply dropped their initiatives. However, New York's background-check law has remained on the legislative agenda and was revived last week by a vote in the Senate. If passed by the Assembly and finally adopted as law, it would prevent anyone from taking flying lessons without approval from the state's division of criminal justice services. Industry spokesmen say that will scare away prospective pilots. Richard Kaylor, of Richmor Aviation, which operates three flight schools in upstate New York, told Business First of Buffalo that schools are already required to submit names of students to the federal government so they can be checked against terrorist watch lists so the state initiative is redundant. AOPA spokesman Craig Dotlo said the law would deter students because of the time lag that would be required to process the background check, giving them time to find other activities. Dotlo, a former FBI agent, also noted that any terrorist who does his homework would be careful to avoid circumstances that would trigger something in the check. "What possible good is this doing except preventing flight schools from being profitable?" Dotlo said.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
A Definitive Immigration Policy
A Definitive Immigration Policy
By Frosty Wooldridge
June 19, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
America suffers its greatest crisis since the Civil War. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We are met on a great battlefield of that war testing whether that nation or any nation can long endure….”
You’ve read or memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. It stood as the definitive mandate for our country in 1865. Lincoln died for his efforts, yet the nation lived. Men and women perished in terrible battles that pitted brothers against brothers and sisters against sisters. In their time, it was states rights and slavery.
Today, in America, our second greatest crisis stems from an endless line of invading illegal aliens crashing our borders from Mexico and around the world. In recent months, they marched for legalizing anarchy and their lawless actions. Their numbers grow and our citizens diminish against the onslaught as our elected leaders work for illegality, for anarchy and in favor for illegal aliens. Some of our greatest national leaders such as Senator McCain, Specter, Hagel, Frist and a slew of others voted against the U.S. Constitution by their actions in supporting Senate Bill 2611. George Bush supports it against 85 percent of the American electorate. Bush aims to destroy the middle class. He’s doing it on purpose because he represents big business. He’s doing it because he is a globalist. He intends to destroy the borders of our country. It is wrong, illegal, unjust, against American citizenship, against legal immigration and a desecration of our rule of law. It stands against every American by provoking and supporting lawlessness. It accepts anarchy as mainstream. Senate Bill 2611 stands against H.R. 4437, which Americans demanded.
The greatest disconnect of American citizens from their leaders wraps itself in the fraud of Senate Bill 2611. Not only will it pound America into the ground with 100 million more people from out of country, it will devastate our sustainability, language, culture, cohesiveness, schools and national fabric. The immigration amnesty of 1986 became a dismal failure which created the 20 million more illegals we suffer today. It allowed the rich and super rich to buy off our leaders as well as degrade our immigration laws or make sure none were/are enforced.
Why is it that Americans know what is best for their country but their leaders stand corrupt in the eyes of history? Why won’t this president and Congress write and enforce a simple, straight-forward immigration policy?
Calie Stephens of Dallas, Texas wrote Bill # 1 USA for a definite immigration policy supported by Americans. How can we stop this invasion? It’s as simple as the nose on your face.
1. Station 20,000 military troops on the southern border of the United States with Mexico. Remove troops from Europe, South Korea or other non-critical areas of the world. Troops must be in place no later than one month after passage of Bill # 1. Once all troops are in place, immediately stop all illegal entry into the United States. Begin construction of a series of actual and virtual fencing to allow for the eventual reduction of manpower necessary to prevent illegal entry. As soon as possible, begin training border agents to replace military troops.
2. Give all illegal aliens already in the United States no more than six months to register with I.C.E. They will be photographed, finger-printed and under go a criminal background check.
a, If they pass the criminal background check and have proof of employment, they will be issued a tamper-proof identification card and a two year work visa.
b, If they fail the criminal background check, they will be deported to their native land.
3. After six months has passed, anyone who does not have proof or a tamper-proof identification card and a work visa will be detained, photographed, finger-printed and deported to their native country.
a, If the illegal who is deported ever enters the Unites States again, he or she will be sent to federal prison for a mandatory term of three years with no chance of parole. The term will be doubled each time the illegal re-enters the United States.
4. Any employer who hires anyone who does not have proof of citizenship or a tamper-proof identification care and a work visa will be fined $10,000.00 per occurrence. Repeated employer violations will be subject to criminal penalties, including prison.
5. All existing citizens will be issued a tamper-proof ID card.
6. Pass a law or a constitutional amendment that prevents children of illegals from gaining citizenship of the United States.
7. Two years after the initial securing of the southern border, as work visa expires, the immigrant must return to his or her native country.
8. If during the term of his two-year work visa, the immigrant was not convicted of any crime and has proof of employment awaiting him in the United States, he may apply for permission to re-enter the United States on a new two year work visa.
9. No one will be allowed to apply for American citizenship while in the United States. Applications for citizenship must be made from applicant’s native country. They must read and speak English fluently for entry as a worker.
10. Anyone not in the United States can apply for a two year work visa. Visas will be issued if applicant passes a criminal background check, has proof employment awaiting him in the United States and meets other requirements yet to be determined.
11. Any non-citizen who works in the United States will pay all taxes currently being paid by citizens except security taxes. He will not be able to collect social security benefits based on his employment while a non-citizen.
12. Any amendments or changes cannot extend the length of Bill # 1 USA beyond one page.
13. Anyone who wants to become an American citizen must apply in his/her country and wait in line for the 100,000 slots annually that will allow a stable U.S. society. Anyone who is convicted of a crime will not be allowed citizenship.
This stands as the template for a definitive immigration policy. It’s simple common sense, realistic and easily workable and fair to all Americans and anyone who wants to work in our country.
By Frosty Wooldridge
June 19, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
America suffers its greatest crisis since the Civil War. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We are met on a great battlefield of that war testing whether that nation or any nation can long endure….”
You’ve read or memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. It stood as the definitive mandate for our country in 1865. Lincoln died for his efforts, yet the nation lived. Men and women perished in terrible battles that pitted brothers against brothers and sisters against sisters. In their time, it was states rights and slavery.
Today, in America, our second greatest crisis stems from an endless line of invading illegal aliens crashing our borders from Mexico and around the world. In recent months, they marched for legalizing anarchy and their lawless actions. Their numbers grow and our citizens diminish against the onslaught as our elected leaders work for illegality, for anarchy and in favor for illegal aliens. Some of our greatest national leaders such as Senator McCain, Specter, Hagel, Frist and a slew of others voted against the U.S. Constitution by their actions in supporting Senate Bill 2611. George Bush supports it against 85 percent of the American electorate. Bush aims to destroy the middle class. He’s doing it on purpose because he represents big business. He’s doing it because he is a globalist. He intends to destroy the borders of our country. It is wrong, illegal, unjust, against American citizenship, against legal immigration and a desecration of our rule of law. It stands against every American by provoking and supporting lawlessness. It accepts anarchy as mainstream. Senate Bill 2611 stands against H.R. 4437, which Americans demanded.
The greatest disconnect of American citizens from their leaders wraps itself in the fraud of Senate Bill 2611. Not only will it pound America into the ground with 100 million more people from out of country, it will devastate our sustainability, language, culture, cohesiveness, schools and national fabric. The immigration amnesty of 1986 became a dismal failure which created the 20 million more illegals we suffer today. It allowed the rich and super rich to buy off our leaders as well as degrade our immigration laws or make sure none were/are enforced.
Why is it that Americans know what is best for their country but their leaders stand corrupt in the eyes of history? Why won’t this president and Congress write and enforce a simple, straight-forward immigration policy?
Calie Stephens of Dallas, Texas wrote Bill # 1 USA for a definite immigration policy supported by Americans. How can we stop this invasion? It’s as simple as the nose on your face.
1. Station 20,000 military troops on the southern border of the United States with Mexico. Remove troops from Europe, South Korea or other non-critical areas of the world. Troops must be in place no later than one month after passage of Bill # 1. Once all troops are in place, immediately stop all illegal entry into the United States. Begin construction of a series of actual and virtual fencing to allow for the eventual reduction of manpower necessary to prevent illegal entry. As soon as possible, begin training border agents to replace military troops.
2. Give all illegal aliens already in the United States no more than six months to register with I.C.E. They will be photographed, finger-printed and under go a criminal background check.
a, If they pass the criminal background check and have proof of employment, they will be issued a tamper-proof identification card and a two year work visa.
b, If they fail the criminal background check, they will be deported to their native land.
3. After six months has passed, anyone who does not have proof or a tamper-proof identification card and a work visa will be detained, photographed, finger-printed and deported to their native country.
a, If the illegal who is deported ever enters the Unites States again, he or she will be sent to federal prison for a mandatory term of three years with no chance of parole. The term will be doubled each time the illegal re-enters the United States.
4. Any employer who hires anyone who does not have proof of citizenship or a tamper-proof identification care and a work visa will be fined $10,000.00 per occurrence. Repeated employer violations will be subject to criminal penalties, including prison.
5. All existing citizens will be issued a tamper-proof ID card.
6. Pass a law or a constitutional amendment that prevents children of illegals from gaining citizenship of the United States.
7. Two years after the initial securing of the southern border, as work visa expires, the immigrant must return to his or her native country.
8. If during the term of his two-year work visa, the immigrant was not convicted of any crime and has proof of employment awaiting him in the United States, he may apply for permission to re-enter the United States on a new two year work visa.
9. No one will be allowed to apply for American citizenship while in the United States. Applications for citizenship must be made from applicant’s native country. They must read and speak English fluently for entry as a worker.
10. Anyone not in the United States can apply for a two year work visa. Visas will be issued if applicant passes a criminal background check, has proof employment awaiting him in the United States and meets other requirements yet to be determined.
11. Any non-citizen who works in the United States will pay all taxes currently being paid by citizens except security taxes. He will not be able to collect social security benefits based on his employment while a non-citizen.
12. Any amendments or changes cannot extend the length of Bill # 1 USA beyond one page.
13. Anyone who wants to become an American citizen must apply in his/her country and wait in line for the 100,000 slots annually that will allow a stable U.S. society. Anyone who is convicted of a crime will not be allowed citizenship.
This stands as the template for a definitive immigration policy. It’s simple common sense, realistic and easily workable and fair to all Americans and anyone who wants to work in our country.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
OOIDA backs bill to simplify background checks
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association announced its support for a bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that limits the amount truckers can be charged for the background check required to haul hazardous materials. The bill also directs the Transportation Security Administration to improve the efficiency of such checks to eliminate redundancy, lost time and driver income.
Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., introduced the Professional Driver Background Check Efficiency Act of 2006 (HR5560) that caps the amount professional drivers can be charged for the hazmat endorsement at $50 per individual. The legislation also stipulates that professional drivers who already have undergone background checks to receive the endorsement will not be subject to an additional check to receive a Transportation Worker Identification Credential card or be required to pay the approximately $105 to $139 fee for this additional check.
“We are very pleased with this commonsense piece of legislation,” said Jim Johnston, OOIDA president and chief executive officer. “While professional truck drivers are among those who are most concerned with security in transportation, the scatter-shot approach to security taken so far has left them extremely frustrated."
HR5560 also calls for a study and recommendations to Congress on ways to eliminate the redundancy and inefficiency of additional background checks for professional drivers required by other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy.
"You can make the case that a driver should pay a reasonable fee to have a background check, but how many times should you be expected to pay that fee and additional ones that bureaucrats dream up?" Johnston asks. "We have at least one member who has undergone a half dozen background checks for different government agencies, not counting the hazmat endorsement that comes when he renews his current license. Not only do drivers get charged higher and higher fees for these, but they also have substantial out-of-pocket costs and lost income from the time off work. It only makes sense for federal agencies to coordinate their efforts to minimize the cost and improve efficiency.”
Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., introduced the Professional Driver Background Check Efficiency Act of 2006 (HR5560) that caps the amount professional drivers can be charged for the hazmat endorsement at $50 per individual. The legislation also stipulates that professional drivers who already have undergone background checks to receive the endorsement will not be subject to an additional check to receive a Transportation Worker Identification Credential card or be required to pay the approximately $105 to $139 fee for this additional check.
“We are very pleased with this commonsense piece of legislation,” said Jim Johnston, OOIDA president and chief executive officer. “While professional truck drivers are among those who are most concerned with security in transportation, the scatter-shot approach to security taken so far has left them extremely frustrated."
HR5560 also calls for a study and recommendations to Congress on ways to eliminate the redundancy and inefficiency of additional background checks for professional drivers required by other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy.
"You can make the case that a driver should pay a reasonable fee to have a background check, but how many times should you be expected to pay that fee and additional ones that bureaucrats dream up?" Johnston asks. "We have at least one member who has undergone a half dozen background checks for different government agencies, not counting the hazmat endorsement that comes when he renews his current license. Not only do drivers get charged higher and higher fees for these, but they also have substantial out-of-pocket costs and lost income from the time off work. It only makes sense for federal agencies to coordinate their efforts to minimize the cost and improve efficiency.”
Private facilities are not held accountable
By Carolyn Tuft and Joe Mahr
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Gary Oheim lay in a group home as bed sores eroded his skin to the bone and filled his room with the smell of rotting flesh.
The smell should have been a warning sign to the state caseworker assigned to do monthly checks on the mentally retarded man. But the caseworker had been to the privately run facility only once in three months, the state said, and then didn't check on Oheim.
The Department of Mental Health didn't learn about Oheim's condition until a worker in that southwest Missouri home complained. By then it was too late. Twenty days later, Oheim died in a Bolivar hospital. He was 40.
Missouri had failed to follow its own rules to supervise the private companies and nonprofit agencies it entrusts with the vast majority of clients requiring full-time care.
Advocates for the disabled often focus on the mistreatment uncovered in state-run institutions. But it is in private industry - particularly in the housing and care of mentally retarded people - that most complaints and investigations occur, where most injuries are logged, and where most deaths have been blamed on poor care - 14 of the 21 deaths of full-time residents.
A Post-Dispatch investigation has found that Missouri's system to catch abuse and neglect at private facilities for mentally retarded residents is in some key ways worse than the state's often criticized practices in policing its own institutions.
Among the findings:
Caseworkers are considered the eyes and ears of the Mental Health Department oversight system, yet some consistently fail to meet with clients at least once a month, as required.
State auditors have repeatedly found times when private facilities did not report suspicious incidents, as required, and state overseers did not investigate reports that were submitted.
The state takes twice as long to finish investigations in privately run facilities as it takes at its own institutions.
The state has failed to revoke licenses of facilities where workers committed deadly lapses, and has failed to ensure workers who have mistreated residents don't get jobs at other places and abuse again.
The Department of Mental Health's own review of its oversight flaws found a system that "really is stretched," said Clive Woodward, the department's director of quality outcomes.
"We were looking for opportunities for improvement, and we have plenty," Woodward told the department's oversight commission last week.
The strain on the oversight system is expected to get only worse.
Taking part in a four-decade national movement to shutter institutions, Missouri now houses five times as many people in private facilities as ones run by the state - with pressure by many advocates to increase that ratio.
Most mentally retarded Missourians still live at home with their parents. As the parents die, experts predict the state will be asked to find places to house thousands more in a system that already is struggling with tighter budgets, bigger caseloads and waiting lists.
Fewer checks, more paperwork
When the Legislature created the Department of Mental Health in 1974, abuses at large, public institutions had grabbed headlines across the country, and advocates were pushing states to shift money and residents into smaller, privately run group homes that they said would boost the quality of life of residents.
The new state department took over control of the older state institutions, and began regional centers to police the new group homes sprouting across the state. The regional centers assembled an army of state caseworkers - called service coordinators - to check on every resident in every facility at least monthly.
But there has been an explosion in the number and types of group homes, particularly over the last decade, and the ranks of caseworkers are stretched thin trying to oversee a mix of corporate facilities, nonprofits and "mom-and-pop" operations.
Mental Health Department officials acknowledge that caseworkers at some of the 11 regional centers must oversee the care of up to 80 residents. Officials estimate that 10 percent of caseworkers aren't making the required visits each month and others are so busy reviewing required paperwork at the homes that they have little time to visit with the residents.
"They're very valuable staff, and they are really feeling beleaguered right now," said Linda Roebuck, the interim director of the division overseeing services for mentally retarded residents.
As far back as 2001, the state auditor's office - a separate watchdog agency in Missouri government - warned of inconsistent policies and practices throughout the state.
Caseloads for caseworkers averaged 41 to 75, depending on the location, with at least one St. Louis caseworker forced to oversee the care of 139 people in private facilities and homes, auditors reported.
The regional centers also have special quality assurance teams that are supposed to check the performance of privately run facilities every three months, but auditors found they had no standards for staffing them.
Poplar Bluff had 13 staffers to oversee care for about 1,100 people. St. Louis' three-person team was to look after more than 9,100.
In the middle were places like the Springfield regional center, which had seven staffers to watch out for 2,200 residents.
One of them was Oheim.
His cerebral palsy had left him immobile and susceptible to bedsores if his caregivers didn't move him and clean him regularly.
That's what the attorney general's office later discovered had happened to Oheim in the fall of 2001 at Turtle Creek Group Home in Bolivar. Right after Thanksgiving, his bed sores had broken open. He was in constant pain and his body started to smell, according to court records.
Workers said the supervisor of the home, Mary Collura, claimed to be taking Oheim to the doctor when she wasn't, court records show. But no one would know of Oheim's troubles outside the home. That fall, his caseworker visited once, on Nov. 9, 2001, and didn't see Oheim, according to mental health officials.
A month later, the regional center's quality assurance team did its three-month review of the six-resident facility, but didn't note any problems with the care of Oheim, according to Mental Health Department records.
It took a new worker at Turtle Creek to complain to Collura's boss, who called the Mental Health Department. That was Jan. 9, 2002, when Oheim's weight had dropped to 108 pounds.
Oheim's death later that month sparked a rare investigation of abuse and neglect by the attorney general's Medicaid fraud unit.
Collura pleaded guilty in February 2006 to involuntary manslaughter and is serving five years in prison. Six other workers pleaded guilty to lesser charges, and charges against the home's corporate owners are pending.
The state eventually shut down the home for other reasons, and the caseworker was suspended for six months and later quit the agency.
"It should not have happened the way it did," said Roebuck, who took over running the department this year. "There was some confusion at the time."
Mental health officials say they have been trying to lighten caseloads and partner more with local government agencies to boost oversight, and they've been working for years to revamp policies and procedures on the quality assurance teams.
But it's clear that the problems have continued.
Last fall, employees of the state auditor's office walked into the Sagamont Group Home for seven in southwest Missouri and found broken furniture, unpackaged food on shelves, an exposed electrical outlet and dirty rooms. Caseworkers who visited the home in the previous two weeks hadn't noted any of the problems.
Also troubling was what happened four days before they visited, the auditor's report said. A resident who was supposed to be kept away from dangerous, ingestible chemicals drank a bottle of hairspray and had to be hospitalized.
The group home notified the Mental Health Department, which ordered the home to start locking up hygiene products after each use. But the day auditors visited - three days after that order was issued - the products were still scattered about a bathroom shared by residents.
No one from the regional center had stopped by to ensure the orders had been followed.
Not getting reports
Even if a caseworker checks on clients every 30 days, no one from the state is around the rest of the month.
The data, at first, suggests there's not nearly as much to worry about in private facilities compared to state ones. The numbers of incidents are higher in the private system, but when compared to the caseloads, the rate of confirmed mistreatment is only a fourth of the rate for people in state care.
That's if the numbers are accurate.
In a report released last fall, the state auditor's office found "numerous examples" of incidents not being entered into the state's incident tracking system - either by private facilities not submitting reports, or by regional center staff not entering them into the computer. It was a follow-up report to the earlier review by the state auditor's office, which found caseworkers at one regional center threw away incident reports before they could be entered into the tracking system and investigated. Left in the void are investigations that never happened, such as the case of Matthew Mell.
The mentally retarded man was transferred among 14 facilities in two years, his family said.
At a group home in Springfield, he began drinking gallons of fluids and wetting the bed, quickly lost 30 pounds, and had behavior so erratic he pushed his mother down, breaking her shoulder, his family said. He finally collapsed one day in 2000 and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found he had undiagnosed diabetes.
Mental Health Department policy calls for caregivers to ensure residents receive needed medical care, but there's no record the incident was reported, as required, or investigated.
There's also no record of an investigation of an alleged sexual attack of Mell at a group home in Nixa.
"My parents got a call that one of the workers had attacked him sexually, and they (the group home) didn't want to be responsible for him," said Mell's sister, Kristal Lindstrom.
Lindstrom said the family was told the attacker was a worker recently out of prison, but they weren't told exactly what happened - just that Mell needed to be placed somewhere else.
They tried other places, including a nursing home in Ozark, where his family said staffers trying to control him punched him and broke his glasses in 2001. Such altercations are supposed to be reported. Again, there's no record of the allegation, according to the Department of Mental Health.
Nor is there a record of anyone investigating how nearly $1,500 worth of video games were stolen from his room there.
Lindstrom, her brother's guardian, successfully fought to get her brother into a state-run institution in Nevada. She said his behavior is now under control and he's much safer.
She has testified about the alleged mistreatment of her brother in front of state lawmakers.
The Department of Mental Health has never questioned the accuracy of the family's public complaints. They haven't checked into them either, officials acknowledged.
The lack of reporting doesn't surprise Patricia Campbell.
She has run group homes around Poplar Bluff for more than three decades and has watched the number of homes explode as the federal government has loosened the rules about how Medicaid money can be spent to care for the mentally disabled.
While she said many facilities are well-run, she knows that it's easy for bad facilities to hide abuse or neglect.
"If you have a nice building, they will give you the license and they will give you clients, and they will tell you how to keep the paperwork going," Campbell said. "But nobody comes in and sees if the person that you're supposed to be caring for is being cared for."
If a resident gets mistreated or injured, nobody from the state is there to see it.
"If you don't write up a report and they don't come out and check," she said, "who's going to know? Nobody."
Not investigating
Even when facilities do report, the department takes twice as long to investigate complaints in the private facilities as in its own, according to an analysis of case data.
Department officials cite myriad reasons: It's harder to track down witnesses in private facilities, private facilities keep different types of records, and federal rules now require investigations in the state-run facilities to be done in five days.
"It's harder to have the direct control in a community provider to complete this," said the department's medical director, Joseph Parks.
And not every complaint is entered into the system to trigger an investigation.
One facility in St. Joseph dutifully faxed the state a neglect report in November 2004. A resident who was supposed to be watched constantly had wandered away and into a neighbor's living room. The group home's workers didn't know the resident was gone until the neighbor returned the resident.
But the group home never heard back from the agency - allowing the neglectful employee to work two more weeks with residents before resigning.
The incident in St. Joseph came to light after federal inspectors saw the report and wondered why it hadn't been investigated. But unlike state-run institutions, only a handful of private facilities are large enough or specialized enough to require federal inspections.
And a group that normally monitors the system is also stretched thin. While it supports the use of private facilities over state ones, Missouri Protection & Advocacy acknowledges it's much harder for the nonprofit group to keep tabs on hundreds of group homes spread throughout the state.
Legislators for a decade funded a program with five full-time department workers who trained and sent volunteers from home to home to check on residents, but the $195,000 funding was cut last year.
The department is starting a new program this year to send volunteers out.
The new program has a part-time coordinator, with a budget of $22,000.
No punishment
At times the Department of Mental Health has determined workers were guilty of mistreatment, but the workers have escaped punishment and commited abuse again.
The department is supposed to immediately put the names of banned workers on a list that public or private facilities check before hiring a new employee. But state auditors last year found 38 people on the list who were working with residents in private facilities. The state's delays in adding names to the list and delays in finishing investigations were blamed.
One worker at a private facility physically and verbally abused a client, and it took the St. Louis regional center nearly two years to add the worker's name to the list. By then, the worker had been hired by another facility, where the worker verbally abused and neglected another resident.
Auditors also found that the state wasn't ensuring private facilities did background checks; one place hired someone without performing a background check and later discovered the new worker had sexually abused a resident there.
Another facility learned after hiring someone that the worker had convictions for robbery, unlawful use of a weapon and drug trafficking - all crimes that disqualify someone from working with mentally disabled people. The employee was eventually fired, but not before being accused of sexually abusing a resident.
Mental health officials say they now run regular reports to ensure background checks are done and banned employees are quickly put on the disqualification lists.
But there was at least one time Mental Health Department officials knew of a banned worker, and gave him a license to operate a Kansas City-area home, Schwab Residential Center II.
Department investigators had substantiated 11 cases of mistreatment at the home from 1999 to 2004, including one that led to a resident's death. Yet Mental Health Department officials told state auditors they lacked the authority to revoke the home's license.
After state auditors raised concerns, the state revoked the home's license. It became the first facility since at least 2000 to have a license revoked for abuse or neglect.
Dorn Schuffman, director of the Department of Mental Health, said the department has shut down other homes with chronic mistreatment of clients, but it was done under "no fault" provisions of contracts that allow the state to cancel them for no reason. He won't name the facilities, he said, because he fears lawsuits if he publicly linked them to mistreatment.
A Post-Dispatch review of licensing and certification files revealed that mental health officials didn't shut down any other facilities because of deaths blamed on serious neglect of workers. The state did shut down Turtle Creek, but only because it had revoked licenses for a group of facilities of its parent corporation. Oheim's death wasn't listed as a reason.
Mental health officials say they punish facilities in other ways, such as forcing them to adopt plans to correct their bad behavior. And while facility operators complain the punishment can be too harsh, department workers complain the opposite, Woodward said.
"Regional centers will tell you that they have next to no control whatsoever of the (private) providers, and it's really hard to shut them down when we need to," he told the commission.
Some advocates for the disabled are demanding more accountability. Among the critics is Gary Stevens, who has cerebral palsy and speaks with the help of a caregiver.
"I feel like the providers' money should be pulled, and if they don't do better, their certification should be pulled," said Stevens, who sits on the Missouri Planning Council for Developmental Disabilities. "If you start to pull their money, they'll bow down."
Even some operators of private facilities say they would welcome more oversight and tougher enforcement of the rules to ensure that residents get the care they deserve.
One such plea came from Wendy Buehler, president of Life Skills, which oversees residential services for about 350 people in the St. Louis area. She told the
commission in April that it needed to find ways to shut down bad facilities.
"Historically they have not been held accountable," she said.
"There doesn't seem to be a position from the department, 'This is a good provider, this isn't.' They have to be pretty bad to get kicked out."
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Gary Oheim lay in a group home as bed sores eroded his skin to the bone and filled his room with the smell of rotting flesh.
The smell should have been a warning sign to the state caseworker assigned to do monthly checks on the mentally retarded man. But the caseworker had been to the privately run facility only once in three months, the state said, and then didn't check on Oheim.
The Department of Mental Health didn't learn about Oheim's condition until a worker in that southwest Missouri home complained. By then it was too late. Twenty days later, Oheim died in a Bolivar hospital. He was 40.
Missouri had failed to follow its own rules to supervise the private companies and nonprofit agencies it entrusts with the vast majority of clients requiring full-time care.
Advocates for the disabled often focus on the mistreatment uncovered in state-run institutions. But it is in private industry - particularly in the housing and care of mentally retarded people - that most complaints and investigations occur, where most injuries are logged, and where most deaths have been blamed on poor care - 14 of the 21 deaths of full-time residents.
A Post-Dispatch investigation has found that Missouri's system to catch abuse and neglect at private facilities for mentally retarded residents is in some key ways worse than the state's often criticized practices in policing its own institutions.
Among the findings:
Caseworkers are considered the eyes and ears of the Mental Health Department oversight system, yet some consistently fail to meet with clients at least once a month, as required.
State auditors have repeatedly found times when private facilities did not report suspicious incidents, as required, and state overseers did not investigate reports that were submitted.
The state takes twice as long to finish investigations in privately run facilities as it takes at its own institutions.
The state has failed to revoke licenses of facilities where workers committed deadly lapses, and has failed to ensure workers who have mistreated residents don't get jobs at other places and abuse again.
The Department of Mental Health's own review of its oversight flaws found a system that "really is stretched," said Clive Woodward, the department's director of quality outcomes.
"We were looking for opportunities for improvement, and we have plenty," Woodward told the department's oversight commission last week.
The strain on the oversight system is expected to get only worse.
Taking part in a four-decade national movement to shutter institutions, Missouri now houses five times as many people in private facilities as ones run by the state - with pressure by many advocates to increase that ratio.
Most mentally retarded Missourians still live at home with their parents. As the parents die, experts predict the state will be asked to find places to house thousands more in a system that already is struggling with tighter budgets, bigger caseloads and waiting lists.
Fewer checks, more paperwork
When the Legislature created the Department of Mental Health in 1974, abuses at large, public institutions had grabbed headlines across the country, and advocates were pushing states to shift money and residents into smaller, privately run group homes that they said would boost the quality of life of residents.
The new state department took over control of the older state institutions, and began regional centers to police the new group homes sprouting across the state. The regional centers assembled an army of state caseworkers - called service coordinators - to check on every resident in every facility at least monthly.
But there has been an explosion in the number and types of group homes, particularly over the last decade, and the ranks of caseworkers are stretched thin trying to oversee a mix of corporate facilities, nonprofits and "mom-and-pop" operations.
Mental Health Department officials acknowledge that caseworkers at some of the 11 regional centers must oversee the care of up to 80 residents. Officials estimate that 10 percent of caseworkers aren't making the required visits each month and others are so busy reviewing required paperwork at the homes that they have little time to visit with the residents.
"They're very valuable staff, and they are really feeling beleaguered right now," said Linda Roebuck, the interim director of the division overseeing services for mentally retarded residents.
As far back as 2001, the state auditor's office - a separate watchdog agency in Missouri government - warned of inconsistent policies and practices throughout the state.
Caseloads for caseworkers averaged 41 to 75, depending on the location, with at least one St. Louis caseworker forced to oversee the care of 139 people in private facilities and homes, auditors reported.
The regional centers also have special quality assurance teams that are supposed to check the performance of privately run facilities every three months, but auditors found they had no standards for staffing them.
Poplar Bluff had 13 staffers to oversee care for about 1,100 people. St. Louis' three-person team was to look after more than 9,100.
In the middle were places like the Springfield regional center, which had seven staffers to watch out for 2,200 residents.
One of them was Oheim.
His cerebral palsy had left him immobile and susceptible to bedsores if his caregivers didn't move him and clean him regularly.
That's what the attorney general's office later discovered had happened to Oheim in the fall of 2001 at Turtle Creek Group Home in Bolivar. Right after Thanksgiving, his bed sores had broken open. He was in constant pain and his body started to smell, according to court records.
Workers said the supervisor of the home, Mary Collura, claimed to be taking Oheim to the doctor when she wasn't, court records show. But no one would know of Oheim's troubles outside the home. That fall, his caseworker visited once, on Nov. 9, 2001, and didn't see Oheim, according to mental health officials.
A month later, the regional center's quality assurance team did its three-month review of the six-resident facility, but didn't note any problems with the care of Oheim, according to Mental Health Department records.
It took a new worker at Turtle Creek to complain to Collura's boss, who called the Mental Health Department. That was Jan. 9, 2002, when Oheim's weight had dropped to 108 pounds.
Oheim's death later that month sparked a rare investigation of abuse and neglect by the attorney general's Medicaid fraud unit.
Collura pleaded guilty in February 2006 to involuntary manslaughter and is serving five years in prison. Six other workers pleaded guilty to lesser charges, and charges against the home's corporate owners are pending.
The state eventually shut down the home for other reasons, and the caseworker was suspended for six months and later quit the agency.
"It should not have happened the way it did," said Roebuck, who took over running the department this year. "There was some confusion at the time."
Mental health officials say they have been trying to lighten caseloads and partner more with local government agencies to boost oversight, and they've been working for years to revamp policies and procedures on the quality assurance teams.
But it's clear that the problems have continued.
Last fall, employees of the state auditor's office walked into the Sagamont Group Home for seven in southwest Missouri and found broken furniture, unpackaged food on shelves, an exposed electrical outlet and dirty rooms. Caseworkers who visited the home in the previous two weeks hadn't noted any of the problems.
Also troubling was what happened four days before they visited, the auditor's report said. A resident who was supposed to be kept away from dangerous, ingestible chemicals drank a bottle of hairspray and had to be hospitalized.
The group home notified the Mental Health Department, which ordered the home to start locking up hygiene products after each use. But the day auditors visited - three days after that order was issued - the products were still scattered about a bathroom shared by residents.
No one from the regional center had stopped by to ensure the orders had been followed.
Not getting reports
Even if a caseworker checks on clients every 30 days, no one from the state is around the rest of the month.
The data, at first, suggests there's not nearly as much to worry about in private facilities compared to state ones. The numbers of incidents are higher in the private system, but when compared to the caseloads, the rate of confirmed mistreatment is only a fourth of the rate for people in state care.
That's if the numbers are accurate.
In a report released last fall, the state auditor's office found "numerous examples" of incidents not being entered into the state's incident tracking system - either by private facilities not submitting reports, or by regional center staff not entering them into the computer. It was a follow-up report to the earlier review by the state auditor's office, which found caseworkers at one regional center threw away incident reports before they could be entered into the tracking system and investigated. Left in the void are investigations that never happened, such as the case of Matthew Mell.
The mentally retarded man was transferred among 14 facilities in two years, his family said.
At a group home in Springfield, he began drinking gallons of fluids and wetting the bed, quickly lost 30 pounds, and had behavior so erratic he pushed his mother down, breaking her shoulder, his family said. He finally collapsed one day in 2000 and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found he had undiagnosed diabetes.
Mental Health Department policy calls for caregivers to ensure residents receive needed medical care, but there's no record the incident was reported, as required, or investigated.
There's also no record of an investigation of an alleged sexual attack of Mell at a group home in Nixa.
"My parents got a call that one of the workers had attacked him sexually, and they (the group home) didn't want to be responsible for him," said Mell's sister, Kristal Lindstrom.
Lindstrom said the family was told the attacker was a worker recently out of prison, but they weren't told exactly what happened - just that Mell needed to be placed somewhere else.
They tried other places, including a nursing home in Ozark, where his family said staffers trying to control him punched him and broke his glasses in 2001. Such altercations are supposed to be reported. Again, there's no record of the allegation, according to the Department of Mental Health.
Nor is there a record of anyone investigating how nearly $1,500 worth of video games were stolen from his room there.
Lindstrom, her brother's guardian, successfully fought to get her brother into a state-run institution in Nevada. She said his behavior is now under control and he's much safer.
She has testified about the alleged mistreatment of her brother in front of state lawmakers.
The Department of Mental Health has never questioned the accuracy of the family's public complaints. They haven't checked into them either, officials acknowledged.
The lack of reporting doesn't surprise Patricia Campbell.
She has run group homes around Poplar Bluff for more than three decades and has watched the number of homes explode as the federal government has loosened the rules about how Medicaid money can be spent to care for the mentally disabled.
While she said many facilities are well-run, she knows that it's easy for bad facilities to hide abuse or neglect.
"If you have a nice building, they will give you the license and they will give you clients, and they will tell you how to keep the paperwork going," Campbell said. "But nobody comes in and sees if the person that you're supposed to be caring for is being cared for."
If a resident gets mistreated or injured, nobody from the state is there to see it.
"If you don't write up a report and they don't come out and check," she said, "who's going to know? Nobody."
Not investigating
Even when facilities do report, the department takes twice as long to investigate complaints in the private facilities as in its own, according to an analysis of case data.
Department officials cite myriad reasons: It's harder to track down witnesses in private facilities, private facilities keep different types of records, and federal rules now require investigations in the state-run facilities to be done in five days.
"It's harder to have the direct control in a community provider to complete this," said the department's medical director, Joseph Parks.
And not every complaint is entered into the system to trigger an investigation.
One facility in St. Joseph dutifully faxed the state a neglect report in November 2004. A resident who was supposed to be watched constantly had wandered away and into a neighbor's living room. The group home's workers didn't know the resident was gone until the neighbor returned the resident.
But the group home never heard back from the agency - allowing the neglectful employee to work two more weeks with residents before resigning.
The incident in St. Joseph came to light after federal inspectors saw the report and wondered why it hadn't been investigated. But unlike state-run institutions, only a handful of private facilities are large enough or specialized enough to require federal inspections.
And a group that normally monitors the system is also stretched thin. While it supports the use of private facilities over state ones, Missouri Protection & Advocacy acknowledges it's much harder for the nonprofit group to keep tabs on hundreds of group homes spread throughout the state.
Legislators for a decade funded a program with five full-time department workers who trained and sent volunteers from home to home to check on residents, but the $195,000 funding was cut last year.
The department is starting a new program this year to send volunteers out.
The new program has a part-time coordinator, with a budget of $22,000.
No punishment
At times the Department of Mental Health has determined workers were guilty of mistreatment, but the workers have escaped punishment and commited abuse again.
The department is supposed to immediately put the names of banned workers on a list that public or private facilities check before hiring a new employee. But state auditors last year found 38 people on the list who were working with residents in private facilities. The state's delays in adding names to the list and delays in finishing investigations were blamed.
One worker at a private facility physically and verbally abused a client, and it took the St. Louis regional center nearly two years to add the worker's name to the list. By then, the worker had been hired by another facility, where the worker verbally abused and neglected another resident.
Auditors also found that the state wasn't ensuring private facilities did background checks; one place hired someone without performing a background check and later discovered the new worker had sexually abused a resident there.
Another facility learned after hiring someone that the worker had convictions for robbery, unlawful use of a weapon and drug trafficking - all crimes that disqualify someone from working with mentally disabled people. The employee was eventually fired, but not before being accused of sexually abusing a resident.
Mental health officials say they now run regular reports to ensure background checks are done and banned employees are quickly put on the disqualification lists.
But there was at least one time Mental Health Department officials knew of a banned worker, and gave him a license to operate a Kansas City-area home, Schwab Residential Center II.
Department investigators had substantiated 11 cases of mistreatment at the home from 1999 to 2004, including one that led to a resident's death. Yet Mental Health Department officials told state auditors they lacked the authority to revoke the home's license.
After state auditors raised concerns, the state revoked the home's license. It became the first facility since at least 2000 to have a license revoked for abuse or neglect.
Dorn Schuffman, director of the Department of Mental Health, said the department has shut down other homes with chronic mistreatment of clients, but it was done under "no fault" provisions of contracts that allow the state to cancel them for no reason. He won't name the facilities, he said, because he fears lawsuits if he publicly linked them to mistreatment.
A Post-Dispatch review of licensing and certification files revealed that mental health officials didn't shut down any other facilities because of deaths blamed on serious neglect of workers. The state did shut down Turtle Creek, but only because it had revoked licenses for a group of facilities of its parent corporation. Oheim's death wasn't listed as a reason.
Mental health officials say they punish facilities in other ways, such as forcing them to adopt plans to correct their bad behavior. And while facility operators complain the punishment can be too harsh, department workers complain the opposite, Woodward said.
"Regional centers will tell you that they have next to no control whatsoever of the (private) providers, and it's really hard to shut them down when we need to," he told the commission.
Some advocates for the disabled are demanding more accountability. Among the critics is Gary Stevens, who has cerebral palsy and speaks with the help of a caregiver.
"I feel like the providers' money should be pulled, and if they don't do better, their certification should be pulled," said Stevens, who sits on the Missouri Planning Council for Developmental Disabilities. "If you start to pull their money, they'll bow down."
Even some operators of private facilities say they would welcome more oversight and tougher enforcement of the rules to ensure that residents get the care they deserve.
One such plea came from Wendy Buehler, president of Life Skills, which oversees residential services for about 350 people in the St. Louis area. She told the
commission in April that it needed to find ways to shut down bad facilities.
"Historically they have not been held accountable," she said.
"There doesn't seem to be a position from the department, 'This is a good provider, this isn't.' They have to be pretty bad to get kicked out."
A Routine Background Check Can Reveal Identity Theft
If you’ve ever applied for job, volunteered, or applied for credit, chances are excellent that a routine background check has been run on you. Despite the fact that most people have some form of background check run on them, very few people have an accurate idea of what a background check reveals about them. This is especially frightening since identity theft is on the rise. Many people only realize after they’ve been turned down for job or credit that their identity has been stolen and has been used by a criminal to steal or to perpetuate crime.
What can you do?
If you haven’t already considered running a full background check on yourself, it’s something you may want to think about. For a modest fee, you can hire a private investigator to run the standard type of pre-employment check, credit check, driving check, criminal check, and general background check that employers, landlords, and others can run on you. This can help you determine whether there are any errors on your records that need to be fixed and can help you find out whether someone has used your identity to perpetuate crime. Correcting mistakes and addressing identity theft before someone else runs a background check and finds false information about you just makes sense. Why lose a great opportunity because of someone else’s crime?
How to avoid identity theft:
Many people assume that identity theft only has to do with your credit report. Therefore, they only check their free credit reports once a year and assume that all is well as long as no one has been obviously stealing from them. This is very misleading. After all, your driving record, criminal record, as well as your credit record can be affected by identity theft as well. Therefore, one of the first ways of avoiding identity theft is to be alert for all the different types of background checks that employers can run on you. Generally, you should run a full background check on yourself at least once a year to determine any errors or problems.
You can also help avoid identity theft by keeping an eye on your identity papers and identifying information. Do not give your credit card numbers, driver license information, and other personal information over the phone or through the Internet unless there’s a reason to do so and only if someone trustworthy is asking for the information. Any mail that arrives with personal information about you should be destroyed before being discarded. Too many people simply throw out junk mail that has filled out forms that criminals can use.
If a routine background check does show that you have been the victim of identity theft, a private investigator can help you determine who is responsible. Moreover, a professional investigator can provide evidence to police authorities, credit bureaus, driving bureaus, and other departments to prove that you’re innocent. Be sure to fill out a police report and report the crime if you are the victim of identity theft. If possible, try to close down as many accounts affected as possible. For example, you need able to close down affected credit cards and bank accounts to prevent criminals from stealing more of your money. Some law enforcement agencies will also allow you to attach commentaries to your criminal, credit, and other types of records to state your side of the story.
What can you do?
If you haven’t already considered running a full background check on yourself, it’s something you may want to think about. For a modest fee, you can hire a private investigator to run the standard type of pre-employment check, credit check, driving check, criminal check, and general background check that employers, landlords, and others can run on you. This can help you determine whether there are any errors on your records that need to be fixed and can help you find out whether someone has used your identity to perpetuate crime. Correcting mistakes and addressing identity theft before someone else runs a background check and finds false information about you just makes sense. Why lose a great opportunity because of someone else’s crime?
How to avoid identity theft:
Many people assume that identity theft only has to do with your credit report. Therefore, they only check their free credit reports once a year and assume that all is well as long as no one has been obviously stealing from them. This is very misleading. After all, your driving record, criminal record, as well as your credit record can be affected by identity theft as well. Therefore, one of the first ways of avoiding identity theft is to be alert for all the different types of background checks that employers can run on you. Generally, you should run a full background check on yourself at least once a year to determine any errors or problems.
You can also help avoid identity theft by keeping an eye on your identity papers and identifying information. Do not give your credit card numbers, driver license information, and other personal information over the phone or through the Internet unless there’s a reason to do so and only if someone trustworthy is asking for the information. Any mail that arrives with personal information about you should be destroyed before being discarded. Too many people simply throw out junk mail that has filled out forms that criminals can use.
If a routine background check does show that you have been the victim of identity theft, a private investigator can help you determine who is responsible. Moreover, a professional investigator can provide evidence to police authorities, credit bureaus, driving bureaus, and other departments to prove that you’re innocent. Be sure to fill out a police report and report the crime if you are the victim of identity theft. If possible, try to close down as many accounts affected as possible. For example, you need able to close down affected credit cards and bank accounts to prevent criminals from stealing more of your money. Some law enforcement agencies will also allow you to attach commentaries to your criminal, credit, and other types of records to state your side of the story.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
What Tiahrt amendments include
Here are some of the restrictions on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly called the Tiahrt amendments, that were attached to funding legislation in 2003, 2004, last year and this year and which some members of Congress now want to make permanent:
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