In Harm's Way: Inside the complaint process

Monday, September 19, 2005

When children are hurt at group homes, residential treatment facilities and other institutions, the agency directors must report to the state Department of Public Welfare.

Click here to a summary of the incidents cited in this series based on a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette request for DPW records for Allegheny County facilities from 1998 to 2005.

DPW then investigates these reports, and in instances where it determines a state law or regulation was violated, it writes the institution describing the problem and asking how it plans to prevent a recurrence.

The institution then responds to DPW explaining what it did or plans to do to correct the problem.

To illustrate this process, here are documents exchanged between DPW and a Pittsburgh group home:

The correspondence begins in Dec. 2003 with a letter finding no basis for complaints of verbal and physical abuse, and lack of food at the home.
The next summer, a DPW document outlines three violations found during an inspection based on another complaint. These include physical abuse, exposure to a hazardous chemical and use of tobacco.
A month later, a follow-up letter notes seven additional concerns in addition to the three violations.
Two weeks later, the group home outlines more than a dozen procedural changes in a plan of correction.

The Post-Gazette obtained these sets of correspondence from DPW for Allegheny County institutions for the period of 1998 through July 2005 by filing requests under the provisions of the state Right to Know law. DPW redacted the names of children and workers from the files. The Post-Gazette obscured official signatures to deter misuse.