Current Events > 86 children die over 10 years in care of private foster care firm

(+) Yeah! (+)

At least 86 children died in a 10-year period while in the custody of a giant for-profit foster care company, according to an investigation by the US Senate Committee on Finance. In only 13 of those deaths did the company, The Mentor Network, conduct an internal investigation, the committee found.

The Senate committee said the company falsely claimed that its child death rate was in line with the fatality rates in the overall foster care system.

The Senate probe started in part because of a series by BuzzFeed News that profiled problems at the company, which was the largest for-profit foster care provider in the country. In one case a 2-year-old girl who was placed at a home run by Mentor was murdered by her foster mother. In another case, a series of boys were sexually abused by a Mentor foster father, whom Mentor paid as a foster parent for years despite a series of red flags. He had requested that he be sent boys who were male, white, any age.

Though Mentor denied the claim, employees told BuzzFeed News that the pursuit of profits sometimes took priority over child welfare. (The company is owned by Civitas Solutions, Inc., which recorded $1.4 billion in revenue last year and trades on the New York Stock Exchange.) As BuzzFeed News reported in 2015, profit margins in the business can be very high. For Mentor, BuzzFeed News reported, earnings before taxes and amortizations could be as high as 44%.

As a result of the committees investigation, the chairman, Orrin Hatch, and its ranking member, Ron Wyden, introduced legislation Monday to require states to disclose the contractors they use in privatized foster care, and to report to the federal government how those contractors perform.

In privatized foster care, states or local governments outsource child welfare duties to companies or nonprofit organizations. Those entities then hire the caseworkers, recruit, screen, and train foster parents, and place children with them.

The Senate, for its extensive probe, surveyed all 50 states, but the results, the report discloses, were too inconsistent to be useful in comparing foster care providers. Seventeen states didnt even respond. Some States collect information, perform reviews, and maintain data in paper files that are never entered into an electronic database or that are never synthesized into a single report or review, the committee noted.

The Senate committee saved some of its harshest language to condemn a report that Mentor submitted in which the company claimed its fatality rate was not high. Mentor said that its death rates are comparable with national norms.

But the committee said that the conclusion was false, inaccurate and misleading. In fact, the committee said, MENTORs death rate among foster children is 42% higher than the national average.

The committee also criticized the companys incident reports, which it said were incomplete and included inaccurate information and diagnostically implausible conditions.

Mentor reported a total of 86 deaths between fiscal years 2005 and 2014. Of those deaths, 23 had been categorized as expected by the company, presumably meaning that the child was suffering from a grave illness, while 62 were unexpected. (In one case, the company didnt provide that information.)

How does that compare with public foster care organizations?

KATV recounts how Sullivan fought a proposal before the Arkansas Early Childhood Commission to require that half of daycare employees be certified in CPR and first aid.

Goddamn it

When something like this is for-profit, you know there's something shady going on.