Brownwood Child Abuse: Tip of the Texas Iceburg ?
Abuses found at foster homes
Exclusive: Abuse found in foster homes overseen by contractors
10:20 PM CDT on Saturday, April 16, 2005
By RANDY LEE LOFTIS and PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News
" Often, however, the records reviewed by The News describe cases in which foster care providers knew about problems but did not act.
In one such case, two foster families – not identified by name or location in a 2004 report – were having their foster children assemble weapons in the families' home-based gun store.
"All of the children work or spend at least 20 hours a week at the barn" that housed the armory, according to a state report. "The children are putting together and packing knives, gun magazines, etc. ... Many of the kids reported that one night they worked until 2-4 a.m. in the morning helping their [foster] dads complete an order."
A caseworker for the foster care contractor, New Horizons Ranch, based in Brownwood, knew the children were working at the armory "because the children told her," a state investigation found. After a tip triggered a state inspection, the contractor removed the children and shut the foster homes.
One problem, the inspector noted, was that the contractor's reports of its home visits, meant to document conditions and reinforce the rules, seemed to be copied verbatim from reports the parents themselves wrote and sent in.
New Horizons' executive director, Del Barnett, said New Horizons knew about the gun store when it approved the families as foster parents. New Horizons also knew that the children were working there, he said. They worked voluntarily and were paid more than minimum wage, he said. New Horizons regularly checked the kids and the families and didn't find any abuse in the kids' work at the gun store, he said.
The state inspection report said the children should never have been allowed to work in such a place. "The [foster] facility director was told that this is not an appropriate working place for children," the report said. "It is against standards for children to be around these types of items."
Mr. Barnett said New Horizons didn't object to that finding.
"It's just a question of whether a kid should be around a gun or not," he said. "We might debate that both ways. It certainly could get out of hand, and that's the danger. If it's a job and it's supervised, well, I don't know. I'm not really trying to defend or not defend that."
New Horizons kicked the parents out of its foster program for unrelated reasons in September 2003, six months before the state wrote its report, he said. The families moved on to another foster care contractor, he said. "
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When discipline turns fatal
Texas lacks tough law on prone restraint that's banned in three states
By Jonathan Osborne and Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, May 18, 2003
" A last-resort tool
In the world of therapy, from wilderness camps to private treatment centers, restraint is supposed to be a last-resort emergency tool for residents who pose a danger to themselves or others.
Instead, Hayes said, "What we find quite often is, it wasn't an emergency until staff intervened."
State reports show that in these facilities, the use of restraint is widespread. Records also show that restraints are used as a form of punishment, for the convenience of staff or to simply take control of a situation.
For example, at a youth ranch outside Brownwood, state documents show, children were being restrained for crying or simply for moving their hands. At least one resident was restrained for refusing to go to school. In another instance, a 16-year-old boy was belittled, threatened with the suspension of home visits and grabbed in the face before staff members took him to the ground, where he died in 1999, according to a DPRS report.
The report says there is strong evidence that the boy "stopped struggling with staff -- and was largely unresponsive -- long before the restraint was terminated."
The report also says it wasn't the first time restraints were misused at the New Horizons Ranch.
"Serious incident reports indicate that the staff sometimes used restraint as punishment, for their convenience or when the child was not necessarily a danger to themselves or others," the state report says."
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CPS & Deputies Remove Children from Filth
March 05, 2003
Three children were removed from a trailer in Brownwood, Texas after they were found in an excrement-filled trailer. According to police the children were a 3 year-old girl and her 6 & 8 year-old brothers who lived there with their 24 year-old mother, her 22 year-old boyfriend and another 20 year-old woman.
The bedroom where the 6 year-old was removed was full of cockroaches with the deputy estimating 100 or more in the room. The children were living in the filthy trailer with an overflowing toilet. The kitchen was full of dirty dishes, rotten food, cockroaches were everywhere and there was no edible food to be found.
According to one Deputy the filth from the wet floors stuck to their boots when they entered the trailer.
CPS officials were filing to the Child Protective Court where they would be reviewed by Judge Rob Hofman who would determine whether the emergency removal of the children was justified. A required court hearing should take place within 14 days.
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Let's invite John Davis to Brownwood (replace the word Dallas with Brownwood below)
Robert Miller:Social worker a groundbreaker in Texas
01:50 PM CDT on Sunday, April 17, 2005
John E. Davis knew when he was growing up that he "didn't want to be a teacher or a preacher," but in a way he combined the two when he became a social worker.
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"I felt the reason that I was able to make a greater impact here is that Dallas wasn't flooded with social workers, a situation that means a goodly portion of the population was underserved."
If he had his way, Mr. Davis would like to have social service clinics in every community in the city, rich and poor, because there are drug addiction and other mental health problems communitywide.
He also says with candor that "Dallas is still not a place to be poor. If you're in Dallas, to be poor is considered an indication that you have a character flaw."
Sounds a little like a preacher, a little like a teacher, but mostly like a social worker.
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/all/stories/041705dnbusmiller.1e5aa41f.html
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