In Harm's Way: Juvenile home incident-report flow rapped

Sunday, September 18, 2005

The two Allegheny County men responsible for placing delinquent and abused children in group homes knew when a Bradley worker was charged in July with molesting a 16-year-old girl at the Mt. Lebanon treatment facility.

It was on the news.

James Rieland and Marc Cherna did not know, however, when two workers at Holy Family Institute in Emsworth were criminally charged with molesting girls there.

That was not on the news.

Neither Rieland, an administrator with Allegheny County's juvenile court, nor Cherna, director of the county Department of Human Services, believes that they should be at the mercy of news accounts for crucial information about the safety of group homes, shelters and residential treatment facilities where they urge judges to send children.

And neither do the judges.

The lack of information worries Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kathleen R. Mulligan. When told about Holy Family Institute's incidents, she asked, "Who knows what is going on that hasn't come to my attention?

"There is nothing worse, from the judge's perspective, than to remove a child from his parents to keep him safe, and he ends up being injured. It is a judge's nightmare."

Although the state Department of Public Welfare requires institutions to report problems, the DPW does not analyze this information, shares almost none of it and insists quality control is the counties' problem.

The counties pay the institutions, so they have the obligation to determine whether they're getting good results for their money, said Marilyn Eckley, former acting deputy secretary at the DPW.

But the counties don't automatically have access to the information the DPW gets from institutions.

"Ideally," Cherna said, "the state should spreadsheet this information and provide all of the information to all of the counties."

The DPW does tell agencies when it revokes or downgrades a home's license.

But licensing certificates do not clearly explain what went wrong. That's because the DPW writes them in a kind of code. For example, the DPW described a sexual molestation at Three Rivers Youth on its license this way: "The rights of resident R.C. were violated by staff person D.Y."

Besides being cryptic, the certificates arrive on decision-makers' desks months after the problem. If a rape occurs in January, and the annual license review leading to a provisional certificate is the next December, officials won't learn of the "violation of rights" for nearly a year.

The DPW has promised to provide additional information, saying it will tell county officials about such events as physical or sexual assaults.

But it will do so only if the incident is likely to prompt removal of the child, which means, for example, that the DPW would not have notified officials about the Bradley molestation under these guidelines because the child remained there.

The DPW has collected e-mail addresses to help in quickly sending this information.

But Rieland said he'd never received a notice.

"I just don't think their whole system of reporting is working," he said.

Both he and Cherna try to collect as much information as they can themselves.

Last fall, Cherna began requiring Allegheny County institutions to send him copies of reports they must file with the DPW when something bad happens.

Rieland employs an even more elaborate reporting system that enables him to get very specific information to strengthen programs. For example, his analysis showed that a large number of Allegheny County delinquents were running away from one reform school within the first 30 days.

He informed the school, and it changed its orientation program. Runaways then declined.

But neither he nor Cherna can get all of the information they want. For example, programs in the Philadelphia area to which Allegheny County has sent only one or two children aren't necessarily going to comply with demands for information from individual counties.

They do tell the DPW, however. And both Cherna and Rieland say the DPW should gather, analyze and distribute the information on problems at group homes for the benefit of all county officials and the children whose safety they're supposed to be ensuring.

"The chief probation officers and the Juvenile Court Judges Commission have been badgering DPW for this information for a long time," Rieland said.

-- Barbara White Stack