|
The
Thompson papers | Carol
Bunko-Ruys | Vopni family | Dueck
files |
Ontario group-homes agency
faces probe
Police investigation
prompted by alleged poor conditions for teens
By MARGARET PHILP ,
Mar. 5, 2003
A group-home agency that has
housed some of Ontario's most disturbed teenagers for more than
a decade is under investigation by police after an official report
alleged poor conditions, inadequate supervision and sexual impropriety
by staff.
The Peterborough Lakefield
Police Service has watched Mitchell Group Homes, which runs 21
group homes in the Peterborough area, for months. In December,
an investigation by Ontario's Office of Child and Family Service
Advocacy into the private, for-profit company's affairs revealed
a litany of serious allegations: slack supervision of an untrained
staff, filth and ill repair in some of the houses, whitewashed
incident reports, the placement of known predators in homes with
abuse victims and sexual improprieties by workers.
Sources say the houses were
dirty, holes in the walls were left unrepaired, youngsters were
sleeping on mattresses on the floor and residents spent most
of their time watching television because they had no programs.
Some children were in unlicensed homes, and ratios of staff to
residents in contracts signed with children's aid societies were
being violated.
Since the advocate's report,
CAS bodies have increased monitoring of the group homes. The
Children's Aid Society of Toronto, the agency's biggest customer
with 21 children in its care until recently, sends a worker to
inspect the group homes at least once a week.
"If we felt the safety
of the kids was not secure, we would not have left them there.
Absolutely not," said Mary McConville, executive director
with the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto. "By
the same token, we want to see the problems resolved."
Mitchell Group Homes grew quickly
as it tapped into a booming market of providing homes for troubled
children. Children's aid societies had 17,463 children in their
care as of last September, a 55-per-cent jump from five years
earlier, when the Ontario government began an overhaul of the
child-welfare system that lowered the bar for taking youngsters
into care.
The Kawartha-Haliburton CAS
investigated Mitchell last fall and pulled its children from
its homes.
"Until the issues are
addressed that the children's advocate raised, and until all
these investigations are over, we've decided not to place kids
there," executive director Hugh Nicholson said.
The Toronto CAS conducted its
own investigation of Mitchell in 2001 and discovered houses in
poor repair, haphazard reporting of serious occurrences and a
lack of programs. But the problems were not considered serious
enough to imperil children.
While the province licenses
all group-home agencies and many of the homes each year, the
standards for a licence relate to record-keeping and safety rather
than staffing and programs. Homes are rarely inspected once the
licence is issued. Smaller homes -- those with fewer than three
children -- are not licensed at all.
Mitchell takes the toughest
children: hormone-charged teenagers with autism, serious mental
illnesses and histories of physical and sexual abuse who are
sometimes violent or prone to harming themselves. It has often
taken children that other group-home operators and mental-health
centres have shunned.
"With some of these children,
we approached 20 to 30 resources that were not prepared to take
them," said Bruce Rivers, executive director of the Toronto
CAS. Now some CASs say the disruption of moving them would be
more traumatic than fixing the Mitchell agency's problems.
Mitchell receives at least
$110 a day for every child, but often collects more. Among those
in its care from the Children's Aid Society of Toronto are deeply
disturbed youngsters whose fees, shared by the CAS and the province,
are about $500 a day.
But sources are critical of
its inexperienced staff. Some are recent high-school graduates
with no training or experience with troubled children. The agency's
workers include university and college students working part
time.
"It's a transient work
force," said Terry Baxter, the Ontario Public Service Employees
Union staff representative at Mitchell. Many of the staff are
paid about $12 an hour, about half the salary of a child and
youth worker in a CAS group home.
One mental-health professional
whose agency frequently works with disturbed teenagers said he
and his colleagues have encountered problems with Mitchell Group
Homes, especially since its rapid growth.
"There's a disorganization
and a kind of flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants sort of feeling
that makes you very nervous with some of these high-risk kids."
In her letter to children's
aid societies outlining problems with Mitchell Group Homes, Child
Advocate Judy Finlay alleged that children who were victims of
sexual abuse were being placed in the same homes as predators.
When they investigated, the
societies were told that the accusation stems from a single incident
when a teenager offered another teen $5 to perform fellatio.
But one worker at Mitchell said he stayed awake through his night-time
sleep shift, fearing the consequences of leaving a sexually aggressive
teenager unsupervised in a house of other children.
"Why we didn't have 24-7
monitoring in our houses, I don't know," he said. "But
there was a call from the advocate. And after that call came,
[company owner] Steve Mitchell called and said, 'Okay, we're
invoking awake hours.' I was already doing it for free."
Since the investigations, Mitchell
has run at about 60 per cent of its capacity. More workers have
been assigned; managers have been hired, and some training for
staff made available.
The company declined to comment.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia
Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
