State still plans to reinstate Normative Services' contract
Posted: Friday, June 26, 2009 12:00 am
MEAD GRUVER
Associated Press writer
CHEYENNE - Youth at a Sheridan juvenile facility were physically restrained far more often than youth at similar institutions before the facility lost its state contract in March, according to documents from the Wyoming Department of Family Services.
The documents, obtained by The Associated Press through Wyoming's open records laws, show department concern that youth were being restrained 10 times as often at Normative Services, Inc., than they were at other facilities.
Department Director Tony Lewis said the problem has been corrected, and the department plans to reinstate Normative Services' contract as a state youth placement option in a week or so.
"To their credit, they've agreed to all these monitoring steps that we've taken, or we intend to take," Lewis said Wednesday.
Department officials haven't given a reason for pulling the contract. The previous contract with Normative Services allowed the department to withdraw from the agreement without offering a reason, and department officials have said giving a reason would violate those terms.
But the high number of restraints might be an answer to the question.
Normative Services is a non-confinement, residential facility for boys and girls ages 14 to 18. Judges place children there because of behavior problems or because of abuse or neglect. The facility had about 150 youth before losing its state contract, but has only about 50 now.
The private facility is one of five nationwide owned by Sequel Youth and Family Services.
Documents requested by AP included all reports of incidents at Normative Services over the year before the Department of Family Services withdrew from its contract with the facility March 18. The department provided 247 incident reports, including 216 that involved confrontations ending in staff pinning youths belly-down, face-up, standing, or in sitting positions.
Of the reports that involved physical restraint, 122 happened from March 18 through Oct. 20, when a department official raised concern about the high number of restraints in a letter to Normative Services Director Bud Patterson.
"Normative Services has had approximately 200 physical restraints so far this year. In comparison, the next two largest facilities in Wyoming have had less than 20 restraints combined," wrote John Kiedrowski, the state youth licensing program manager.
Kiedrowski wrote that he was concerned about a procedure called "touch for attention" - placing a hand on disobedient youth as a pre-restraint warning. The touch for attention, he wrote, "may trigger aggression instead of de-escalating it."
Normative Services staff wrote the incident reports on a Department of Family Services form. The reports documented much fewer pre-restraint warnings after the letter.
They also documented fewer cases of girls being restrained: 74 cases in the seven months before the letter and just five in the five months between the letter and the contract termination. Reports of boys being restrained increased significantly, however, from 53 to 89.
It's difficult to gauge how frequently youth were hurt by being restrained. Six reports documented minor injuries, including one youth with bleeding in his ear. Most reports were heavily redacted, however, and department spokeswoman Juliette Rule said the redacted information included follow-up medical treatment.
The 31 reports that didn't mention restraint documented a variety of incidents including youths running away and minor injuries. Rule said only a handful of reports - no more than five - were withheld because they documented abuse or neglect, and Wyoming law does not allow the release of such information.
Rule said it was possible the abuse or neglect didn't happen at Normative Services and the reports documented what children told staff had happened to them elsewhere.
Adam Shapiro, chief executive officer of Sequel Youth and Family Services, said Normative Services has made a number of improvements.
"We have made a lot of management changes, we have made some changes in our training, we have tremendously increased the amount of training, we've brought in some staff from our other programs from throughout the country to help stabilize the culture," he said.
"It's ongoing, it's a constant monitoring that we have to do of ourselves and that they have to do."
Lewis said the state will monitor who is admitted at Normative Services. A big problem, he said, was that Normative Services was accepting tough kids - gang members from large California cities - and putting them in with youngsters who weren't serious troublemakers.
"The reason that you can end up restraining a lot of kids in an institution is because you have an inappropriate mix of high and low risk kids," Lewis said. "When you have that kind of a mix, you have more management problems."
Lewis said Normative Services also has agreed to rely less on youth policing each other.
Sequel Youth and Family Services also owns four other similar residential facilities in Woodward, Iowa; Clarinda, Iowa; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and Prescott Valley, Ariz.