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Aug. 18, 2004, 6:09AM
Strayhorn: State fails abused kids
Complaints like those at a Houston center are handled poorly, she says
By POLLY ROSS HUGHES
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN - Rats and locked isolation, beatings and broken bones — foster children in a residential center in Houston's Third Ward complained repeatedly of harm at the hands of their caregivers, records show.
Most of the complaints lodged against Houston's Child and Adolescent Development Center Inc. regarding abuse, neglect or unfit living conditions were never substantiated by state investigators.
But Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn is convinced those allegations and others across Texas were inadequately investigated by the state, likely imperiling the children it is trying to protect.
According to documents released last week, of 47 such complaints against the Houston center in 2002 and 2003, 11 were never investigated and 32 were rejected. Four were found at least partially valid.
Center Director Beryl Shorter said unsubstantiated allegations are made about nearly every residential foster care center, and she believes Strayhorn's criticism is unfair to her facility. She said that when the center fell out of compliance, she corrected the problems.
"I'm concerned about being targeted and what this is truly all about, and whether it's political," Shorter said.
Strayhorn originally criticized the center and other facilities in a scathing report on the state's foster care system issued in April. It was among those she said were inadequately regulated or investigated, based on data from the past two years. She has called for an overhaul of the state's child-protective system.
Last week, after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that complaint and investigative records at the Department of Family and Protective Services must be made public, the comptroller released reams of documents to support her conclusions.
"I see troubled kids in a lot of different places," she said. "You get totally different, wide discrepancies, wide variance on how these dollars are expended."
Strayhorn lists problems
Licensing investigators too often fail to consult outside sources to corroborate information, the comptroller's staff says. If they receive reports of no heating in winter, as they did about the Houston center, they don't seek utility records, for instance.
"You look for patterns. The facility had a pattern of violations," Strayhorn said, noting licensing standards are weak, investigations inconsistent and monitoring inadequate.
"A lot of these complaints (against the center), we believe, came from very credible individuals — medical staff, teachers, caseworkers and law enforcement sources," she said.
Shorter said she corrected problems investigators found. She said sometimes children with "issues" fabricate stories.
"I'm not in the business to hurt children. I'm in the business to help them," she said, adding that in more than two decades of caring for troubled children, there has never been a death on her watch.
State's methods criticized
Most of the serious allegations at the center, such as tales of rats and an isolation room, were not verified by the investigators. If anyone is at fault, Shorter said, it would be the state and its methods of investigating. Under the state's licensing system, the center was mostly found in compliance, the records for 2002 and 2003 show.
In January and February, investigators found the center deficient because a staffer hit a child, it failed to submit a criminal history check every 24 months on staff and it used "harsh, cruel, unusual or unnecessary discipline." Other investigators found that the center denied food to a child as punishment and failed to report sexual abuse allegations by a resident in the time required by law.
In one handwritten complaint, a 15-year-old girl claimed a staffer forced children to stand with books on their hands for an hour. If the books fell, they'd have to do the same for two hours.
"She would tell us, 'You better not say anything.' We used to go to our rooms and cry," the note read.
One day, the same staffer came into the living room with an extension cord and hit the child twice, the girl reported.
The girl's case was closed administratively by the Department of Family and Protective Services rather than investigated. The reason listed was that it was "not subject to regulation," records dated Nov. 11, 2003, show. Shorter, meanwhile, denies ever having had an extension cord at the facility.
Ruthie Ford, a key staffer in compiling the comptroller's report, said the problem is the state's incomplete reporting and lack of accountability.
"It does show up in the way they report these instances and follow up and investigate them," she said.
The Health and Human Services Commission and Department of Family and Protective Services have promised to look into the allegations.
So far, Strayhorn said, they have not shared their findings with her.
"We get less information rather than more," she said.
On Friday, the state removed 22 foster children from Woodside Trails, a wilderness camp in Bastrop County where children lived outdoors year-round and that Strayhorn criticized for unhealthy conditions.
polly.hughes@chron.com
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