Update Oct. 18, 2011: More details from police on the tasering of an 11-year-old boy with severe developmental disability
All the world’s an onion. Peel back a layer on any issue and a dozen more await, each more intriguing than the one before.
An example: The Tasering of an 11-year-old boy in Prince George last month. I went digging around for information this week on that troubling incident, only to end up puzzling over how a company with a history of running bars and liquor stores ends up in the group-home business.
The lowdown on this particular case will ultimately come from B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. Her office is reviewing the incident and other issues at B.C. group homes for children in care, and we’ll all know more when her analysis and two separate police reviews are complete.
But even a cursory look at the Prince George situation raises questions about how B.C. contracts services for its most at-risk children.
On the surface, the April 7 incident in Prince George is about a boy stabbing a group-home staffer after the worker pursued the upset boy into a trailer on the property. The boy was then Tasered by police.
But in the early days of her investigation, Turpel-Lafond discovered another layer to the story after learning that some group homes call police when a child gives them any trouble, even if it’s just refusing to go to their room.
“The incidents are numerous, and they aren’t related to criminal activity by the child or youth,” she said, expanding the scope of her review to include investigating how often police are called to resolve group-home problems.
And there are more layers than that in the Prince George case.
The owner of the group home, Taborview Programs, is a home-grown Prince George entrepreneur, Jordy Hoover. He’s better known in the region for the many bars and liquor stores he owns.
Hoover also owns 30 greenhouses, a nursery growing three million seedlings for the forest industry, and a gravel operation. A 2009 story in the Prince George Citizen described him as having “a diversified portfolio of business in the city.”
That portfolio includes 26 beds for youth with profound behavioural problems, disabilities or other special needs. Hoover received almost $3 million from the Ministry of Children and Family Development in 2009-10 to provide those services. (That same year, he and his companies donated more than $32,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party.)
Hoover didn’t return my call, so I couldn’t ask how he got into the youth-care business. But the fact that he did underlines not only that it’s common for MCFD to contract with private companies for specialized foster care, but that the process for awarding contracts has some interesting wrinkles in it.
None of this is to presume there’s something wrong with Hoover’s group-home services.
In the business world, you don’t have to be a youth-care specialist to own a group home any more than you have to be a miner to own a mining company. JC Hoover Holdings certainly isn’t the only private company doing this work, as a browse through the public accounts confirms.
Contractors receiving more than $500,000* a year from MCFD also have to be accredited. Taborview is.
Still, it’s definitely a new day when running group homes for high-risk kids is now just part of a diverse business portfolio. Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t shake a nagging concern about what it means when the provision of child and youth services is just another business venture.
How did Jordy Hoover get into this? In theory, creating 26 beds for high-risk, high-needs youth - a big project - requires going to tender, and the successful bidder would probably need significant expertise in the field to land the contract.
But the reality is that MCFD regularly enters into short-term contracts for a particular child or youth who can’t be placed at an existing group home. (The government still calls them "specialized resources" when only one child lives there, as was apparently the case in Prince George.)
Those short-term contracts have a habit of being renewed automatically if all is going well, for years in some cases. One “emergency” contract begets another as MCFD and the contractor grow familiar with each other. Next thing you know, you’re a bar owner with $3 million in MCFD contracts and responsibility for 26 fragile lives.
And when the flash of a Taser brings it all to light, surprised British Columbians can only wonder what else we don’t know. Plenty.
*This figure was wrong in my original column, but has been corrected here.
*This figure was wrong in my original column, but has been corrected here.
Comments
http://www.libertarianbookclub.com/2011/05/08/how-did-government-care-for-foster-kids-before-tasers/
If a private for profit contractor has even a small modicum of skill they structure the MCFD/CLBC payments to generate a tidy profit, AND pay off the full cost of buying the real estate that the program is located on.
It resonates with what we are hearing from many non-profit community groups that operate group homes and other supports for adult community living.
Bascially CLBC is bullying them into accepting contract reductions that force them to try to care for more people with less money. The clearly-stated threat is that if they speak up to complain publicly or challenge the cuts, CLBC will simply put their care contracts out to tender to companies like this that care nothing about the vulnerable people being served and simply see this as another way to make a profit.
It's deeply disturbing, and the public doesn't have a clue what's going on because there is no independent rep like Mary Ellen Turpel Lafond with the authority to investigate and report on what is happening in the group homes etc for adults.
http://www.libertarianbookclub.com/2011/05/12/charity-by-force/
Just a few thoughts around a few issues people wouldn't know about unless they work in the helping profession. I hope you are able to dig around and find more of this information that needs to be brought to the public and Marry Ellen's attention.
I heard on good authority, that there were 'allegations/concerns' of Taborview's business practices to a PG based reporter back in the fall of 2010.
His response was that they (the newspaper) couldn't run or investigate any type story regarding concerns over the MCFD and Taborview's relationship unless it was brought forth in the provincial legislature by a member of the opposition, at which time it could be reported.
Is that true?
i found that after the tazoring, most information was better found in larger newspapers, the local paper even deciding to keep Jordy's name out of it until it couldn't be helped. Any negative comments regarding Hoover was also struck from the comments section of the article itself, leaving only a general 'positive' feedback defending Hoover's operations.
Truth is, that incident was bound to happen; I was told by the Children's Rep that they had a long list of complaints regarding Taborview, and that they knew that there was a very tight non-business relationship between Jordy and a previous head of Northern BC's MCFD director. That these concerns were either ignored or filed under 'anecdotal' kills me; how can something be investigated if it's not told to someone? Isn't that how an investigation starts, by having someone actually tell someone in authority?
Apparently not, an 11 year old needs to be tazored first.
anyways, i digress. the reality is that there aren't 26 bed openings in the North for these kids to be reassigned. They come from all over the north, and perhaps more money could be assigned to recruiting services in their home towns. The staff and kids of Taborview are all well-meaning and of good hearts, but that doesn't make it a good place to grow up.
And i agree with the previous post; just because you take a few 1 or 2 day courses doesn't necessarily mean that you should be qualified to be a youth worker, working by yourself with up to 4 teenagers w/ 'behavioural difficulties' under your supervision.
But in my experience, more than a few companies are ok with that, including the gov't.
Relying on sources like the Representative for Children & Youth is like accessing tabloid grade information.
Turpel Lafond's comments to the media on this case was sheer embarrassement because of her lack of accurate information.
Jody, you need to stop writing these types of stories. You rely on other reporters to supply the content and you don't dig deep enough to get your own. Pathetic journalism. You might as well write for the National Inquirer.
I spent years as a Director of large non-profit Youth Rsource agency. I have extensive experience staff training and crisis response. I am very familiar with contract negotiations and the process through which they are awarded. This article is rife with inaccuracy and misleading conjecture. It would be helpful for the reporter to perhaps adhere to some of the tenants of investigative journalism..such as say "checking facts before publication" Sad example of flinging feces.
Is this article and blog not a conflict of interest?
Just saying.
Friendships and working relationships can run deep.