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Monitor to oversee facility for
troubled children August
1, 2007
By Susan K. Livio
The largest privately run
residential facility for troubled kids in New Jersey will be
monitored by an expert to help correct safety and treatment problems
that prompted the state to halt admissions in April.
The monitor will oversee the
VisionQuest Pathfinders program in Burlington County under an
informal agreement reached between the program, the state's child
wel fare agency and the Office of the Child Advocate, officials from
the organizations confirmed yesterday.
It has not been determined who will
be chosen as a monitor, when the monitor will be installed, or how
the 110-bed program in the Pinelands will change.
But state officials and
operators of the program agreed improvements are needed. They say
there are too many children on site, the "longhouse" cottages used
to house children need to be replaced, and the treatment needs to
better involve families.
"The program needs to be re vamped
for this day and age, and we are really working hard with the state
to provide those changes," VisionQuest President Peter Ranalli said
yesterday. "We need less numbers at that location. The (youth) need
more than what we are giving them. These are part of the
negotiations."
Child Advocate E. Susan Hodg son
said she envisions two monitors -- one focused on the children's
treatment and another concentrating on safety, supervision and
licensing problems.
"I would like to think that some
form of the program can certainly be fixed, but it's got to be safe
for the kids," said Hodgson, whose agency is an independent state
watchdog. She added that the Department of Children and Families,
the state's child welfare agency, "has to be more involved, and we
need to see more successful outcomes."
Four months ago, Hodgson
revealed there had been a total of 69 allegations of abuse and
neglect reported at the facility from January 2006 to March 2007.
Kids went "AWOL" 187 times in the first three months of this year.
At Hodgson's urging, Children and
Families Commissioner Kevin Ryan stopped sending children to
VisionQuest.
The department has since launched
its own investigation. According to a June 29 letter to VisionQuest
obtained by The Star- Ledger, Ryan's staff raised serious questions
about staffing shortages supplemented by temporary workers, and a
lack of attention paid to treatment and long-term planning for
children's futures.
The state also identified
questionable expenses and decision- making. The letter cited an
unexplained charge of $116,674 for legal fees, and a retirement
party "inappropriately charged to the program."
Management also reduced its payroll
by $460,000 by cutting back on child care staff and administrators
and cutting salaries of the employees who remained, according to the
letter.
"The lack of stable, experienced
staff and the resulting dependence on untrained temporary workers
negatively affects the care that children at VisionQuest receive,"
Ryan's letter said. These conditions have allowed for the
"premature and overly aggressive use of restraints."
VisionQuest accepts children
ages 12 to 18 from the child welfare and mental health systems and
juvenile court. They live in a rustic camplike facility with a
stable of about a dozen horses that sits on roughly 70 acres in the
Pinelands. A year's stay costs the state $111,270 per child.
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