------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NewsBank, inc. - The Commercial Appeal - 2000 - Article with Citation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Headline: Innocents under siege - Evidence mounts that the state has persistently, perhaps even deliberately, failed to protect the truly helpless citizens in its care. Date: March 7, 2000 Section: EDTORIAL - Mid South Commentary By Page: Edition: Final Length: 896 words Author: Paula Wade The Commercial Appeal Index Terms: MEMPHIS NURSING HOMES DISABLED TENNCARE Text: NASHVILLE - In the past 10 days, I've had to write about four different aspects of Tennessee's failure to protect truly helpless people in state care. I'm not talking about four individuals; I'm talking about thousands of the most helpless folks in our society: frail elderly people abused or neglected in nursing homes, young children left to languish in abusive foster homes, mentally ill people who are denied needed care, and young children cheated out of decent early education by Shelby County's day care racket. And there's a sick sort of theme tying them all together. First, these are people who generally don't have powerful advocates, a lot of money, or loads of political influence. By definition, they are frail, needy, easily victimized, and easily forgotten by political leaders. Second, in each case the state is paying someone else - a nursing home, a behavioral health company, a foster parent, or a day care broker - to care for these individuals. It's the state's legal responsibility to make sure the provider delivers decent care in exchange for that money - our money. And in each of these systems, there is mounting evidence that the state has failed, persistently and perhaps even deliberately, to protect its most helpless citizens from the profiteers within the nursing home, day care, foster care and mental health industries. Consider these examples: Backing up persistent observations that nursing homes seem always to know when state inspectors are about to show up, evidence has emerged that Department of Human Services officials have been selling or giving away the schedules of inspectors. The response from DHS officials is that they've asked their employees about it and it was denied. Lawmakers also have heard heartbreaking testimony of mistreatment and neglect in these homes, and the state's indifference to families' pleas for help. Then there's the case of Sarah C., the now-17-year-old who suffered horrific sexual and occult abuse while she was in state foster homes between the ages of 4 and 7. There was a three-year legal battle to get Sarah the mental health services she needs because of that trauma and is entitled to from TennCare Partners. The state agreed, as part of the settlement of a federal lawsuit, to make sure she got the care that the state's contractor, Magellan Corp., has refused to make available. Now her public interest lawyers are back in court because, four months after the agreement was signed, Sarah C. still isn't getting the mental health help she needs. Shelby County's day care racket, the subject of a federal grand jury probe, is an example of the state allowing profiteers to rake in six-figure salaries while paying caregivers poorly, providing inadequate training, and fighting any attempt to raise the ratio of caregivers to children or account for their spending of public money. Tennessee's foster care system has become another focus of legislative questions - this time about reports by now-grown foster children who endured years of abuse by foster parents and who know that these abusers have never been prosecuted and may still have charge of new foster kids. They can't get any answers from the state because those records are kept secret. There is no way to know how many abusers are in the system, or how the state has responded to reported abuse. There's one other really sick theme to all of this. The people who are suffering by state neglect are all innocents. They are where they are through no fault of their own. If they had committed a heinous crime and were imprisoned, their constitutional right to safe and humane conditions would protect them from such abuse. (The Framers of the Constitution must have assumed Americans wouldn't need a similar constitutional mandate to protect our elderly, our children, and our sick.) If they were criminals, batteries of lawyers would come to their rescue, armed with the awesome power of past judicial decisions protecting inmates' rights to decent housing, protection from predators, palatable and sufficient food, medical care, recreational and educational opportunities, and sanitary conditions. But in a real sense, these people are prisoners - of their deteriorating bodies and minds, of mental illness, of circumstance, of horrific past abuse, of too-tender years. They are the ones who can't fight back. And they are the ones Tennessee seems to have left to the whims of profiteers. WAY BACK IN the 1870s, still fresh from the horrors of the Civil War and its cruel prison camps, Tennesseans were faced with the task of revamping the state Constitution. Because so many people had been through the dreaded camps, language guaranteeing "safe" and "humane" prisons was added to Tennessee's essential document of government - a simple statement that our society does not condone cruelty, even directed at prisoners. As we in Tennessee are considering another broad look at our Constitution this year, perhaps the heart and conscience of this state could offer some similar constitutional protection for the innocent and the helpless in state care. Paula Wade is a reporter in The Commercial Appeal's Nashville bureau. You can reach her at (615) 242-2018 or contact her by E-mail at: wade@gomemphis.com Copyright 2000 The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN Accession Number: 0012170111 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------