The plan recommended new performance standards, tougher sanctions for violators and a public Web site that everyone could use to gauge the quality of homes. Most important, the much-criticized licensing and monitoring systems run by various state departments were to be consolidated and strengthened.
But the major provisions of the 170-page plan, devised by a task force appointed by Gov. Parris N. Glendening, were not carried out. Some have blamed the price tag, others bureaucratic turf battles or the momentum lost as gubernatorial administrations changed.
The need for reform is as urgent now as when Glendening formed the panel in response to concerns raised by community leaders, legislators, state agency officials and others.
Children are at risk. Regulations lack teeth and often go unenforced, an investigation by The Sun found. Incidents of abuse and neglect – even death – occur without adequate investigation or consequences for the homes. With no one telling them not to, some operators give themselves big salaries and generous perks at state expense.
Christopher J. McCabe, secretary of the state Department of Human Resources, said yesterday that regulatory flaws have been a problem for years and accused the Glendening administration of neglecting the child welfare system. He asserted that the Ehrlich administration has “made significant progress.” Among other things, he said, the state is developing computer databases to track children, instituting stricter rules for group homes and strengthening enforcement.
“We are serious in our mission to repair a damaged child welfare system, which suffered from years of relative indifference bordering on neglect, particularly during the prior eight years,” McCabe said in a letter to The Sun.
But experts say much more needs to be done to protect the 2,700 children in 330 group homes in Maryland. Child advocates say the state should:
“The problem is, you don’t have anybody to monitor these homes,” said Ella White Campbell, a Randallstown activist and member of the task force that wrote the recommendations in 2001. With group home operators on the honor system, she said, “anything goes.”
“Providers have to know the state is out there and they are subject to review, and that will move them to do a better job,” said Kathleen Hughes, a managing attorney at the Maryland Disability Law Center, a state-designated watchdog for the developmentally disabled that has complained about lax investigations.
“We pay a lot of tax money to place these kids in these facilities, and we ought to know what happens as a consequence, and we really don’t know,” said James Filipczak, who was a task force member. He retired in 2002 as executive director of Edgemeade, a Prince George’s County nonprofit that operates a group home, a residential treatment center and offers other services. “Would you like to run an automotive manufacturing plant and not know the quality of your engines?”
“People who work for nonprofits shouldn’t be driving BMWs, or shouldn’t be provided BMWs to drive,” said Susan Daddio, a former group home director who now leads Court Appointed Special Advocates of Baltimore County, a group of volunteers who monitor the cases of abused and neglected children.
A range of services
Child welfare experts said the state must also look beyond group homes to develop broader services for kids. Maryland needs more mental health facilities, for example, for its most emotionally disturbed children.
Meanwhile, social services workers, who place children, say they don’t have enough good choices among group homes.
Change won’t come, warns Del. Bobby A. Zirkin, who served on the task force, unless the governor gets behind it.
“It’s a very complex problem that has grown up over decades,” said the Baltimore County Democrat. And in his view, the group home system is too broad and complex to be reformed piecemeal through individual legislative measures.
Campbell, the Randallstown activist, agrees on the need for gubernatorial intervention. There’s no single agency or person in charge of the system, she said, adding: “I don’t think the buck stops anywhere.”
After the Glendening task force disbanded in 2001, the state did not create the oversight committee that the panel had envisioned to guide changes. Glendening did not respond to The Sun’s request for comment.
By the time Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. was elected governor in November 2002, the push for reform had stalled, former task force members say.
Ehrlich declined to discuss the findings of this series. A spokesman, Henry Fawell, said: “We are going to respectfully decline to comment.” He deferred questions to the secretaries of two of the agencies that regulate group homes, McCabe and M. Teresa Garland.
She is special secretary of the Governor’s Office for Children, Youth and Families, which has been training state employees and others on the rules that took effect this year.
The office, which accepts applications to operate group homes and decides which state agency should license applicants, is scheduled to go out of existence June 30 under “sunset” legislation adopted in 2002. Under the state budget adopted last weekend, 18 of the office’s 45 employees and some of its responsibilities would be transferred to other agencies, Garland said yesterday.
Ehrlich said Monday that he hopes to preserve the office through executive order. Garland said she does not know what would happen to the office’s responsibilities for group homes if the governor is unable to do so.
What other states do
Some states have been innovative in trying to improve the regulation of group homes.
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Kentucky requires that such homes be accredited by an organization such as the private Council on Accreditation, which includes family and children’s services practitioners.
“We do not have the training and expertise to delve deeply into therapy, and that is an area that the accrediting agencies look into,” said Robert Hester, who oversees regulation of children’s group homes in Kentucky.
In California, officials partly base payments to group homes on the experience and training of their staffs. The state collects fingerprints and conducts criminal background checks on all staff members, instead of relying on group homes to do them.
Iowa is moving toward linking payments to outcomes, as measured by youth recidivism rates, urinalysis results and the absence of mistreatment.
“If somebody’s starting a nonprofit and the goal isn’t really to service the kids – it’s to make a profit – their outcomes probably will not be good and they’ll end up losing their contracts,” said Jerry R. Foxhoven, director of an Iowa watchdog agency.
What Maryland does
In Maryland, the Governor’s Office for Children, Youth and Families “is looking at other states,” such as California and Iowa, for ideas, said David Ayre, director of research, evaluation and data collection.
Maryland now spends $157 million a year to care for children in group homes, a figure that has risen over time. But the state has not kept up with the growth in the number of homes by investing more in its regulatory system.
The Glendening-appointed task force estimated that it would cost $3.9 million to hire the added inspectors, investigators and other employees needed to staff a streamlined monitoring and licensing program. But neither Glendening nor Ehrlich adopted the plan.
“We’re all working on these problems, and we’re working on them within budgetary restrictions,” said Carol Benner, who was co-chair of the task force and now heads an office that monitors group homes licensed by the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “Could we do better? Sure, if we had more resources, we could do better.”
Yet some observers say Maryland already spends a sizable sum on care in group homes. The nearly $60,000 a year per child that the state pays, on average, is almost 10 times as much as it pays foster families to provide the same kinds of care – and everyone, including regulators, prefers to place children with families.
“We’re spending a lot of money,” said Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a Maryland Democrat and member of a House subcommittee that oversees foster care of children. “But we’re not getting much for it.”
Congress requires states to establish standards for foster care as a condition of receiving federal funding. The state Department of Human Resources could lose an estimated $1.57 million if it doesn’t address deficiencies found in a federal review of its child welfare programs within two years, the Department of Health and Human Services said.
Maryland has been under pressure from Washington to improve its recordkeeping, among other things. The state could not even identify which group homes children are living in, the federal review found last year.
A computerized guide
McCabe and other state officials said the computer databases under development are scheduled to be in place in 2006. They’re intended to provide the first comprehensive guides to group homes – their costs, capacities, locations and the kinds of foster children they take in.
“With advances in technology, the state is committed to providing the best tools that we can,” McCabe said in an interview.
The secretary and his deputies also said county social services workers and neighbors of group homes need to alert them to possible mistreatment of children.
“Clairvoyant we’re not,” said Craig G. Adams, McCabe’s top group homes aide.
Most regulatory improvements wouldn’t require more money, experts say – just better enforcement of existing rules. Group homes, for example, are supposed to ensure that administrators and employees are qualified under state rules and pass background checks. But The Sun found that many homes do not.
The state has made some changes to improve regulation of group homes in response to the task force findings. Starting in 2003, operators were required to receive two to three hours of training before they could open a group home.
Rules governing staffing were modified as of Jan. 1 to bar murderers, rapists, batterers and recently convicted drug dealers from working in the homes. Companies must notify regulators of bankruptcy filings and related lawsuits, and face sanctions if caught reporting false financial information or misrepresenting facts.
“As far as regulations, we are where we need to be,” said Garland, whose office took the lead in revamping the regulations. McCabe said yesterday that the new rules are “significant improvements that raise the bar for group home operators throughout the state.”
The Department of Juvenile Services, which has 301 kids in 20 group homes that it licenses, has stepped up monitoring as a result of the new rules, a spokeswoman said yesterday. Furthermore, said LaWanda Edwards, “DJS would support any changes in group home regulations that would benefit the children of the state.”
Child advocates say the revised regulations don’t go far enough.
Inspectors must respond to complaints within 24 hours, but they aren’t required to conduct and complete an investigation within a set time. They must monitor group homes’ pledges to fix violations, but no time limit is specified. Records examined by The Sun show that investigations can take months, if they occur at all.
Similarly, the Department of Human Resources announced recently that it will require group home administrators to provide criminal background checks on themselves – but the files would be reviewed only when inspectors visit the homes.
New rules also require that a majority of board members not be related to the administrator, but regulators do not usually check. And experts say the boards should not have any relatives.
“That’s already a problem if the CEO is related to someone on the board,” said Floyd J. Alwon, who heads the professional development division of the Child Welfare League of America. “The board of directors can’t do their oversight job.”
Changes fall short
Caseworkers at county social services departments, who place foster children, complain that the databases under development would not help them better choose among homes because the information won’t include inspection and mistreatment reports. And group homes won’t be able to use the databases to learn whether prospective employees have had problems elsewhere.
“What we’ve found is all [bad employees] do is leave me and go to another one,” said Brenda Boyd, program director of the respected TuTTie’s Place group homes in Baltimore. Not long ago, she says, she saw a counselor whom she had fired for mistreatment working for another group home.
The new regulations barring murderers and those with recent drug convictions fall short, advocates say, by not barring many violent felons, such as those convicted of first-degree assault. Bankrupt operators and others who have committed fraud, meanwhile, may still run the homes.
When asked why financially suspect operators weren’t excluded when the rules were tightened, Cynthia Mather, deputy special secretary of the Governor’s Office for Children, Youth and Families, said, “I don’t remember that coming up.”
Today’s regulatory failings have their roots in the history of group homes. Like other states, Maryland began moving foster children from large public institutions to small, privately run group homes beginning in the 1950s and 1960s.
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In addition to improving oversight of group-home care, experts say, regulators need to develop more alternatives for troubled youths. Maryland has become too dependent on group homes for a population in need of a variety of services.
To care for the children, McCabe said, he is encouraging greater use of relatives and foster families – something the federal government has been pushing states to do. But there should be more kinds of help available, experts say, from family counseling to residential treatment more intensive than group homes can provide.
Public authorities have an obligation to ensure that individual needs are met in a timely manner at every stage of the child’s development, advocates say. That was one of the guiding principles of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, which completed a national report last year.
Sue Badeau, deputy director of the commission, said states rely too much on group homes, using them as a replacement for the child’s family.
“We’ve misused group homes,” she said.
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTCraig G. Adams of the Department of Human Resources says the public's help is needed to monitor group homes.
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTChristopher J. McCabe says the Ehrlich administration has made strides in improving the child welfare system.
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTCounselor Roberta Butts reacts to a compliment from a girl at San Mar Children's Home, a Boonsboro facility whose nurturing environment exemplifies the standard sought by a state task force in 2001.
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTA 16-year-old resident at San Mar finds comfort in dolls, stuffed animals and books. Girls at the therapeutic group home there receive intensive counseling and other services.
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTM. Teresa Garland of the Office for Children, Youth and Families says the regulations "are where we need to be."
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTCarol Benner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says, "If we had more resources, we could do better."
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTRoberta Butts, a direct care worker at the San Mar Children's Home in Boonsboro, comforts one of the residents.
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ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTResidents at the San Mar Children's Home in Western Maryland clean dishes after their lunch. The girls are required to do chores as part of their schedule.
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