As our editorial on today’s opinion page points out, state officials’ abject failure to protect the mentally ill patients of the Kaufman House in Newton revealed glaring flaws in the protective services network — flaws that cry out for legislative reform.
A couple of proposals deserve passage this session, including one to create an emergency abuse and exploitation unit in the attorney general’s office to spearhead investigations and coordinate now-fragmented agency oversight.
The movement in the past few decades to reintegrate mentally ill patients into community-based homes has largely been a good one, but the Kaufmans are a prime example of how horribly things can go wrong without adequate oversight. State lawmakers need to make sure this never happens again.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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13 Comments
This is more about the glaring inadequacies of SRS than anything else. I remember in the 80’s the complaints and reports made to SRS about the suspicious activity going on there, but obviously no one who had the authority to do anything about it took the client’s complaints seriously. The spotlight needs to be on SRS and why this situation went on as long as it did. There is no valid excuse for the abuse being ignored or invalidated. Heads should roll.
Da,Yes, it shows glaring errors and negligence on the part of SRS. It also points up the current inability of the psycological community to police it’s own. They need to develop policies to prevent such abuse, and the means to enforce them. If they don’t, and soon, they risk the state deciding what treatment is appropriate and what isn’t.
It’s too bad our AG has more important things to do.
HEY EVERYBODY! I FOUND OUT JOHN MALKOVICH AND TRUTHREGARDLESS IS REALLY IAN HIMSELF! HAHAHAHA!!
Crusader X-
I quote from Abdul -Has life grown so dull,That you wish to end your career?Vile infidel knowWith the name that you showI’ll give you a kick in the rear.
It is easy to blame SRS. I like to do it, too. After all, not every social worker is brilliant or works 12 hour days for subsistent wages. The laggards!
But the truth is that SRS and its contracting agencies operate under a massive case load of kids and others who are the refuse of a Kansas society that will not take care of its own, a Kansas society that prefers to play, do drugs, and have screwed up kids that they will not care for.
It’s the government’s fault? Bull roar. It’s your fault.
At this very moment EVERY foster home in our region is full because of kids removed from unbelievably filthy homes, newborn kids and their mothers testing positive for high levels of illegal drugs, and abuse cases that would turn your stomach.
Yeah, blame the government.
Kiesha, Who should respond to abuse complaints? If the government doesn’t require groups homes to be licensed and have regular unannounced checks, isn’t the setting just ripe for these situations to occur?Isn’t the govenment responsible for the agencies they contract to oversee and deal with these problems, and because an agency is overloaded with cases, is that an excuse to fall down on their responsibilities they were contracted for?Serious changes need to happen on both the government level and SRS. There is no valid reason why this situation should have been ignored and allowed to go on for decades. Absolutely no excuse at all.
Damoon, I probably picked the wromg case to go off on. Of course there’s no excuse for what happened for so long in this case.
And I do have to say that I wish this was the only horribly managed case in that part of the state. The approval and oversight of homes there can be very lax.
But where were the families of the victims during all this? They seem to have lots to say now. Where were they then? Why didn’t they take the time and put out the effort to be heard decades ago? That’s my point.
I know what you mean, but I have a client who was at that place for seven months. He has no family or friends to look out for him, and because he’s MR and schizophrenic, he finds it all but impossble to stand up for himself.The key to solving this problem is to hold group homes to the same standards as foster homes. They need to be licensed and supervised. That’s not a cure all, but it would go a long way into preventing this type of abuse. Many people in my client’s situation have no one to advocate for them except those that work in the system.
Damoon–I had friends who worked for Child Protective Services in Texas, and they noted things got worse for the clients when services were “privatized” and contracted out. Not that the contractors were inherantly bad, but they “cherry picked” the cases, and left the state with the absolute bottom of the barrel to deal with. You know the cases, the ones the private sector cant break even on. Didnt this same thing happen in Kansas too?
Even when you contract out, the state can only do so much with the really hard cases, but yet they get all the blame. If we believe in contracting, then let the contractors be responsible for ALL cases, not just the ones they can afford, with the state picking up the rest.
There were problems before privatization, but that action, though lauded by politicians, is a disaster hurtling toward a greater disaster.
A few years back SRS started subcontracting their child welfare services to non-profit organizations. The non-profits underbid these contracts and at least one has gone bankrupt. The state aided and abetted these stupid business moves. Business is Business, after all. Even though the state would seem to have some minimal interest in protecting the welfare of children who have no one else to do this for them. But, it is kind of like Dickens’ England in Kansas sometimes.
Those non-profits still in on the subcontracting work, aren’t able to do their jobs with the money they are getting [their margins - actually losses - have been driven each year by the competing subcontracting dynamics], so they naturally cut back on their services. Which in turn lowers their ability to help increasingly sick kids they are having to deal with.
A friend of mine who went to school at Berkley remembers the California experiment with subcontracting child welfare services. After privatization, there were a few grisley murders of children in foster homes and group-homes that created a public outcry. This led to the state of California setting up Government funded monitoring of the privatized programs. Which, guess what, ultimately doubled the cost of the programs that were in place before privatization began. It could happen in Kansas.
I take my hat off every day to those people trying to make this effort work. Their job is a huge uphill battle – every day!
Great post firsthand.
I still think, in general terms, that the government should not compete in arenas where the private sector is best equipped to handle the job. But some things, like child care and elder care, dont lend themselves to excessive competition. People arent machine parts to be warehoused and kept dry until the competitive environment improves.
Do ya think Corkins could learn something from this?
If we have enough money in this country to fund the war machine, then we should have enough to protect the vulnerable. No one disagrees that the system needs to be fixed, unfortunately it’s only when people like the Kaufmans are exposed that positive changes take place.