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A Safety Net With Loopholes
Limits To NYS Law To Screen Caregivers May Let Criminals In
April 13, 2005, Long Island Press
Charles Lane
New York State’s plan to fingerprint employees caring for the developmentally disabled is being dogged by complaints of poor oversight and insufficient resources from agencies and advocates for the disabled.
Advocates call the plan a good first step, but state audits note systematic failures within the New York Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities that have prevented it from closing all the loopholes through which criminals have slipped through to become caregivers to the developmentally disabled.
What's more, Long Island agencies have their own special worry: that with too few fingerprinting locations planned for LI, the agencies won't be able to hire fast enough.
On April 1, New York State began fingerprinting workers, volunteers, family care providers and others who have direct contact with patients affected by such developmental disabilities as mental retardation, learning disorders, autism or cerebral palsy. By screening for criminal backgrounds, the new law aims to raise the level of protection for the disabled.
"We think it's a necessary safeguard," adds Ben Golden, the director of governmental affairs at NYSARC, a not-for-profit advocacy group that runs community-based programs for the developmentally disabled in New York State and on LI.
But the state, Golden notes, will be checking fingerprints only against its own database and will not tap into the FBI's national database. Because the fingerprinting check will only look for crimes committed inside New York, the possibility exists that an abuser convicted in another state could cross state lines and work in New York. By contrast, New York fingerprinting laws for teachers and all other school personnel mandate that the prints be screened against the national FBI database.
"Some may raise the issue of what happens with individuals who have a criminal history that is outside the state," Golden says.
The state comptroller's office raised these same concerns in a report issued last year regarding state-operated care facilities. The comptroller singled out 287 state employees who did not currently reside in New York but worked at New York facilities. The report made clear that even if nonresident employees were to commit a crime in New York--even crimes against the disabled they work with--the state could be ignorant of who committed the crime, because the employees' fingerprints were never taken and were not kept in the state's "search and retain" database.
The state Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (OMRDD) refused to comment for this article, despite numerous calls. However, in response to last year's comptroller report recommendation that OMRDD use the database from other states, OMRDD said that it was "exploring the feasibility." That was in August 2004; there has been no other response to the recommendation.
The report raised another concern regarding the state's plan to fingerprint: New York State hasn't done an adequate job in the past. The comptroller criticized OMRDD for hiring "direct care workers without performing the required fingerprinting and criminal background checks."
The report found that 7 percent (197) of all state care workers had not been fingerprinted as required. When checks were finally done at the comptroller's request, seven workers were found to have criminal records, though their crimes "did not affect the employee's suitability as a care worker." These workers had unsupervised contact with the developmentally disabled for a three- to 24-month period.
Advocates worry that OMRDD's poor oversight of state employees might carry over to the much larger pool of employees in the nonprofit system.
"Any loophole in something we think is a protection is especially dangerous," says NYSARC's Golden. He thinks the new law is an improvement over the current system, but adds, "you don't want the situation taken for granted, where you think these people are safe and the assumption is made on a false premise."
On Long Island last month, at an informational meeting for nonprofits hosted by AHRC, OMRDD's planned implementation of the new law encountered other criticisms. When OMRDD explained that LI would have only one fingerprinting location, Meg Reidy, director of OMRDD services at Little Flower Children's Services in Wading River, recalls the reaction as being "a very mixed bag."
Reidy says some agencies have concerns about filling positions in a timely manner. "They'll have a delay in services. The major concern was [that] there was only one area with an instant scan."
The location of the sole fingerprinting scanner, in Commack, is an hour-long drive from Riverhead or East Moriches agencies. The distance raises concern that applicants would be reluctant to drive that far, provided they even own a car.
OMRDD also declined to officially respond to questions on the subject of scanning locations, but at the meeting did mention the possibility of "mobile scanning stations." The agency also enumerated other possible alternatives to sending applicants to Commack: Nonprofits could purchase scanning units themselves ($13,000 each), or use the old-fashioned "ink and roll" method. The drawback is that with the older method--compared to the electronic scan--it can take from two to six weeks to mail the sample and get the Department of Criminal Justice response.
Susan Moran, assistant executive director for mental retardation services at SCO Family of Services, says, "While you're waiting for their fingerprints to be checked, they are a temporary employee and they can't work unless they're with a senior staff person."
Moran explains that in large facilities, temporary employees are still valuable. But when the nonprofits provide in-home care--where the employee is often alone with the disabled person--a sudden vacancy can leave staff resources stretched so thin that client services are affected.
Overall, however, everyone interviewed believes the new law is a positive first step.
"Thank God that we'll have this law," says Peggy Limongelli, program coordinator at AHRC. Limongelli says that without the new law, an abuser fired from one agency could easily be hired unwittingly by another. Limongelli's own elderly mother was abused by a care worker. "Without this law, the woman who beat my mother could actually work at my agency."
"As with anything new," Moran adds, "it'll take some time to get the kinks worked out of the system."
Posted by 1000monkeys on April 15, 2005 06:14 PM