Our annual holiday reminder

 

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending December 18, 2024

● Citing multiple examples of needless removal of children from the homes of disabled parents, the U.S. Department of Justice has accused Arizona’s family police agency of repeatedly violating the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. 

● The allegation was unfounded. The children were never removed.  But still, a false allegation of educational neglect caused so much trauma that it destroyed a struggling family. Decades later, Stacy Torres, now a professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, writes in Vital City that the wounds have not healed. 

Her plea is that the agency that wrecked her family, New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, not respond to the latest horrifying child abuse deaths by rushing to investigate more families and take away more children.  She writes: 

Inflicting reactive, punitive bureaucratic machinery on struggling families like mine kills in other ways. At nearly 45, I’m still grieving the day child welfare entered my life, killing trust, belonging and relationships that once seemed so durable I never imagined leaving home or my sisters — until one day I had no choice but to flee in order to save myself. 

● Citing advocates including NCCPR, a New York Daily News story also noted concerns about a possible foster-care panic. 

● And using a New York case as an example, Anjana Samant, senior staff attorney for the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, offers a superb overview of the system’s failings, and a series of concrete solutions, on the Justice By Design podcast. 

● It’s not just New York, of course – indeed, most places are worse. NCCPR Board Member Prof. Dorothy Roberts discusses the harm in an interview for Current Affairs.  Says Prof. Roberts: 

[M]any Americans have been convinced that it is better to put children through the trauma of family separation than to leave them at home. They don't realize that the vast majority of children who are removed from their homes aren't removed because of physical or sexual violence or abuse. They're mostly removed because of neglect. And so you have loving, caring parents who, in most of these cases, are trying to take care of their children, and they just don't have the material resources. And instead of helping them, you're making it worse for these children by adding this trauma to their lives. 

● In fact, it’s not just the United States. In this video, one of Britain’s foremost “child welfare” scholars, Prof. Andrew Bilson summarizes research from around the world on the question “Does child protection reduce harm?”  Since I’m highlighting it here, you can probably guess the answer. 

● Back in the United States, a new study demonstrates the harm of harassing families where a newborn tests positive for marijuana exposure.  Such newborns were no more likely to experience abuse or neglect than those who tested negative or who weren’t tested.  And, of course, “Black and multiracial newborns were significantly more likely to be tested for substance exposure at birth.” 

● In Oregon, the state family police agency wants to narrow the definition of child abuse – but only when they are the abuser.  I discuss what they have in mind in this three-part post to this blog. The post also recaps the many blunders of Oregon’s Senator Soundbite, whose blunders have only made a bad system worse. 

● In Tennessee a story from the Nashville Banner illustrates how deep the stereotypes run when it comes to families who lose children to foster care.  The story deals with two ways family policing systems steal from families.  A key lawmaker is very concerned about one of them – swiping the Social Security benefits to which some foster youth are entitled.  Tennessee also forces parents to pay some of the cost of foster care to get their children back.  The euphemism is “child support” but the proper term is “ransom.”  The lawmaker is also concerned about that – but not nearly as much. 

● Ever wonder why so many studies keep finding that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care?  This column in The Imprint, from Lamani Moore, a former foster youth, sheds some light on it.  He writes: 

Growing up poor and not entitled to anything when I lived with my family was hard, but it wasn’t lonely or sad. I wasn’t truly introduced to sadness or abandonment until I reached the foster care system.

● The Imprint reports that Congress has passed a bill intended to curb the abuses inflicted on children by the “residential treatment” industry.  But a more accurate title for the Stop Institutionalized Child Abuse Act would be the Study Institutionalized Child Abuse Act because, unfortunately, that’s pretty much all it does.  The only way to stop institutionalized child abuse is to stop institutionalizing children. 

An odious practice tolerated in most states – and encouraged in Oregon

Third of three parts. Read the full series here.

There is an odious practice in the “residential treatment” industry known in that industry as “creaming” – as in skimming the cream.  Here’s how it works: 

First, the residential treatment “providers” justify their existence, the enormous harm they do to children and the astounding waste of taxpayer dollars, by claiming there’s no other choice: The children supposedly are so very, very difficult and have so many problems that no family could possibly handle them – they simply must be institutionalized.  (By the way, it’s not true.) 

But then, when children come along who are, in fact, particularly hard to handle, the providers refuse to admit them.  They don’t acknowledge that they’re creaming, of course, they just say that these children “aren’t the right fit for our program” or something like that.  Then, having taken only young people who could most easily succeed without them, if their own families or foster families got the right kind of help, the institutions claim as their own whatever minimal success they may have with some small portion of those they choose to admit. 

There are two ways to try to solve this problem: the right way and the Oregon way. 

To understand how Oregon screwed up so badly we need to return to 2015, when the Portland alternative weekly Willamette Week, exposed horrific abuse by one group home provider, Give Us This Day.  They also exposed how Oregon DHS knew about it and ignored it for at least 18 months.  And part of the problem revolves around creaming.  As I wrote at the time: 

The Willamette Week stories note that Give Us This Day was willing to take the children deemed most difficult – children other private agencies wouldn’t touch.  But “private” agencies funded with public funds shouldn’t have a choice in the matter.   It appears that DHS does not require private agencies to sign “no reject, no eject” contracts.  That allows agencies to engage in …“creaming” …  They take the easy cases and ignore the rest.  Since the state allows this, it makes agencies like Give Us This Day among the only choices for the children deemed hardest to place. 

There are two ways to deal with this: The right way: require “no reject, no eject contracts.” Then providers are required to develop programs that are flexible enough to accommodate the children rather than making the children accommodate the providers.  And the state only signs contracts with agencies that can do it.  

Most states are too afraid of their residential treatment industry to do this.  But I am aware of no state, other than Oregon, that went to the opposite extreme: Oregon actually passed a law that penalized agencies if they didn’t engage in creaming! 

The law states that 

The director shall impose a civil penalty of not less than $250 nor more than $500, unless otherwise required by law, on a child-caring facility that assumes care or custody of, or provides care or services to, a child knowing that the child’s care needs exceed the license, certificate or authorization classification of the child-caring agency if the assumption of care or custody, or provision of care or services, places that child’s health, safety or welfare at risk. 

Happily, an otherwise dreadful piece of draft legislation includes repeal of this part of state law – though only because Oregon, which tears apart families at a rate well above the national average, has no place to dump all those kids.  But that would merely make Oregon no worse than other states – it wouldn’t demand no reject no eject contracts and providers capable of handling such contracts. 

The source for so many bad ideas 

Oregon State Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin

And, of course, that still leaves the question: Who in the world would have pushed the idea of putting a provision encouraging creaming into state law in the first place?  It’s not entirely clear, but it appears to have been at least supported by Oregon media’s favorite lawmaker, the one they love to quote demanding accountability from everyone else, but is never held to account herself. Yes, it’s one more failure from Oregon’s Senator Soundbite – Sara Gelser Blouin. 

She told The Oregonian 

… the civil penalty was created in direct response to Give Us This Day accepting children whose needs it was not equipped to meet. “The purpose of that civil penalty was to give those places a reason to say ‘no’ …” 

Yikes.  Until they finally stop institutionalizing children altogether – and yes that can be done – states need to demand institutions that can serve any child -- at a minimum without abusing the child, neglecting the child or otherwise making the child’s condition worse. Then such institutions should be required to say “yes.” 

This kind of blunder is nothing new for Gelser Blouin. I think she actually means well.  But time and time again she has set back Oregon’s few feeble efforts at reform, and generally made a bad system worse.  Consider: 

● A recent study, using data from 2015 to 2019 found that in Oregon, more than 40% of all families and nearly three-quarters of  Black families – 72% - would eventually face investigation by DHS for alleged child abuse or neglect. Such investigations can, in themselves, be enormously traumatic for children.  Yet during this same time period, Gelser Blouin was getting fawning media coverage for falsely claiming that Oregon wasn’t investigating enough families.  (Details on how she took data out of context to reach that conclusion can be found toward the end of this post.)

What in the world does Senator Soundbite want? Should DHS not even wait for an allegation and just investigate every Black family in Oregon – given how close they come to that already?  Perhaps a reporter should ask her. 

● Then there was her war against “differential response” (DR). Gelser got the legislature to shut down that approach to easing the trauma of investigation in July 2017.  One month earlier, a comprehensive independent report on Oregon’s differential response initiative specifically refuted Gelser Blouin’s claims about safety declaring: 

[O]ur analyses find no evidence that DR undermines the safety of children in Oregon. [Emphasis in original.] 

The evaluation found that families receiving a differential response intervention were significantly less likely to have another substantiated report of child abuse than a matched comparison group of families who got a traditional Oregon child protective services investigation. 

So did Gelser Blouin not know about this evaluation when she moved to kill the initiative, or did she know about the report and decide to ignore its findings. Perhaps a reporter should ask her.  

● When children must be placed in foster care the most humane most stable and safest option almost always is kinship foster care, placement with a family member or close family friend.  But in 2022, Gelser Blouin said she would introduce legislation that would actually make it harder for relatives to get custody, tilting the balance in favor of what should be called stranger care.  

The idea didn’t even originate with Gelser Blouin.  It came from a right-wing group in Arizona that, ALEC-style, is promoting such legislation across the country.  Perhaps a reporter should ask Gelser Blouin about this.  

It’s not that Oregon would have a good system if every journalist covering these issues didn’t have Sara Gelser Blouin on speed dial while largely ignoring families whose children have been wrongly taken, their advocates and their attorneys.  But it probably would be less bad.

How the Oregon “child welfare” agency wants to make it even easier for “providers” to get away with abusing children in their care

 

The Oregon State Capitol

 Second of three parts.  Read part one here. 

Faced with an artificial “shortage” of foster homes caused by the fact that Oregon still tears apart families at a rate well above the national average (which is, itself, too high), the Oregon family police agency, the Department of Human Services, and Gov. Tina Kotek have decided the best answer is to loosen the already minimal rules concerning abuse of children in foster care, especially group homes and institutions.  They’ve proposed legislation to do just that. 

The minimal rules already are minimally enforced.  We know this because the official rate of abuse in foster care in Oregon is roughly 50 times lower than the rate found in multiple independent studies, including two specific to Oregon. (For details see the previous post). 

But according to one state official, Anna Williams, executive director of something called the Governor’s System of Care Advisory Council, as a result of these minimal laws minimally enforced the state is “bleeding providers” – at best an inapt choice of words. 

Yesterday’s post discussed the excuses those favoring this legislation have put forward.  This post discusses some of the specific provisions. 

Agency use of restraints would be almost unrestrained 

Among the most often exposed abuses in “residential treatment” is the overuse of various forms of “restraint” such as physically “restraining” a child who is, in some way, “acting out” or putting the child in “seclusion,” a euphemism for solitary confinement.  As the Oregonian reported, the bill waters down restrictions on physical restraint and seclusion to the point that if it’s not being done with the specific intent to punish the child or for the provider’s convenience, it’s just fine.

Willams explained that: “If a hold or seclusion is used for the safety of the child and it’s done with training, then it’s not investigated because that’s not wrong.” 

But, of course, those saintly providers for which Williams has such concern don’t go around admitting they use restraints for punishment or convenience – they always say they only use restraints when absolutely necessary for the safety of the child. You find out if that’s true or not by, um, investigating. 

The bill also narrows the definition of “chemical restraint” – doping up children to make them docile for their caretakers.  Again, this has been the subject of numerous exposes across the country.  But the Oregon bill would give institutions a blank check to do this to children as long as “a licensed physician or other qualified health professional…” prescribes the drugs and administers them.  (And who employs and/or contracts with the medical professionals used by residential treatment centers?) 

The bill even narrows the definition of sexual abuse when it happens in foster care.  As the Oregonian story explains: 

[I]t’s currently defined as sexual abuse for a child or youth up to age 20 in foster care or an institutional care facility to have sexual contact with anyone responsible for providing care or services to the child. The planned legislation would define sexual contact as abuse if it occurred only with a person employed by a child caring agency or foster home. 

So if, say, a therapist not directly employed by a group home or institution takes advantage of the inherent imbalance of power to have sex with an older foster youth, that’s OK?  

But wait, there’s more

Other provisions of the bill would: 

● Make it harder for DHS to suspend or revoke the license of a private foster care agency. 

● Reduce the amount of information about abuse in foster care that DHS must report to lawmakers. 

● Extend the amount of time children can be filed away and forgotten in what are often the worst placements of all – parking place “shelters.” 

● Make it easier to ship children all over the country to often abusive institutions. (Recall how well that worked) and reduce the information available to lawmakers and the public about how often this happens – or even which institutions are receiving Oregon foster youth. 

And, apparently fearful about what all this might say about racial bias and bias against the disabled in their system, DHS would no longer have to give anyone 

Demographic information about all children or wards the department currently has placed in out-of-state facilities, including but not limited to age, gender or gender identity, race, ethnicity, tribal status and, if disclosed by the child or ward, sexual orientation; [or] The number of children or wards the department currently has placed in out-of-state facilities who have autism, intellectual disabilities or developmental disabilities 

The bill amends 90 pages of existing law, so there may be other awful provisions I’ve missed.

It also has two good provisions: One would end the practice of making older foster youth in “independent living” programs pay part of their own housing costs.  The other would repeal a provision of existing law that was so dumb it boggles the mind to think it ever became law in the first place. 

I’ll discuss that on this blog tomorrow.

Oregon’s “child welfare” agency wants to narrow definitions of abuse – but only when THEY are the abuser!

In Oregon, "child welfare" has become a pathetic
game of whack-a-mole. Looks like lawmakers
are about to take another whack.

                            

When a state takes away too many children it becomes a seller’s market for “providers” who institutionalize those children. They can set the terms for how they’re regulated.  There are two possible solutions to this: Pander to the providers at the expense of the children or stop taking away so many children needlessly.  Guess what Oregon’s family police agency wants to do.

 First of three parts

 In 2015, the Portland, Oregon alternative weekly Willamette Week exposed horrific abuse at one private agency’s group homes.  They also revealed that Oregon’s family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) knew about the abuse for at least 18 months and did nothing.  As I wrote at the time: 

Why did [the Oregon Department of Human Services] allow all this state-sanctioned child abuse for all this time?   The Willamette Week stories make clear that political connections had something to do with it.  But the bigger reason is the problem that has plagued Oregon child welfare for decades: Oregon is begging for places to put children it takes from their parents, and beggars can’t be choosers. 

And the reason for that is not because there are too few foster parents.  Rather, it’s because Oregon takes away far too many children. 

When a child is abused in foster care, the abuser is not only the individual who committed the abuse.  The abuser also is the family police agency – because that agency put the child in that dangerous foster home, group home or institution in the first place. 

Rather than address needless removal the Legislature passed bills to marginally tighten regulation of group homes and institutions and raise standards for family foster homes.  But even minimal standards were enough to prompt some institutions to close. 

And so began Oregon’s pathetic game of whack-a-mole.  As I wrote in 2016: 

[A]n expose of abuse in foster care by the alternative weekly Willamette Week whacked the state into raising standards for foster homes.  So the state wound up warehousing foster children in offices and jails.  So -- whack! -- a child advocacy group brought a lawsuit to prohibit the practice.  The Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) settled.  And children promptly wound up warehoused in hotels. So –whack! – there was another lawsuit and another settlement. 

So then DHS shipped children to horrible out-of-state institutions.  Then, -- whack! – that was exposed, so DHS went back to warehousing children in what they called  “repurposed juvenile jails.” 

And now, the game of whack-a-mole may come full circle: Gov. Tina Kotek and DHS are backing draft legislation to repeal regulations curbing abuse in group homes and institutions.  

Oregon, like every other state, already grossly underestimates abuse in foster care.  Officially, Oregon claims that in any given year only three-tenths of one percent of foster children are abused in care.  In other words, Oregon DHS wants us to believe that if you gathered 300 former foster children in a room and asked “How many of you were abused during your last year in foster care?” only one would raise her or his hand.  The average length of stay in Oregon foster care is two years, so, if official figures are to be believed, only an average of six-tenths of one percent of Oregon foster children are abused at any point while in care. 

Nobody really believes this. 

Independent studies, including two specific to Oregon, repeatedly find abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes – and the rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse.  

In a story about the proposals, The Oregonian points out that under terms of a consent decree Oregon has to reduce abuse in foster care and an independent court monitor will be – well, monitoring that.  (Although the monitor is excellent, the settlement is a result of another dreadful McLawsuit of the kind that has failed all over the country. So this settlement probably will do little good and may make things worse.)  

It’s not clear what data the monitor will use, since, DHS claims there’s already almost no abuse in foster care. But could just the presence of the monitor have something to do with why DHS wants to narrow the definition of abuse – but only for abuse in foster care? 

Another reason was offered up by Anna Williams, a former lawmaker who now is executive director of something called the Governor’s System of Care Advisory Council. She told The Oregonian: 

“The reason we need to address provider concerns is we are bleeding providers and if kids need care, they have to get that from providers.” 

So, we have to loosen regulations about abusing kids because the providers are bleeding? 

The worst excuse for this bill 

That reason is dumb and it ignores the real problem of wrongful removal, but at least Williams probably really believes it.  Another reason put forward by DHS should send everyone’s b.s. meter off the scale. 

Essentially DHS stole our argument for narrowing a very different set of laws affecting birth parents and tried to use it to advance their own interests. 

They claim, presumably with a straight face, that the current supposedly overbroad definitions of abuse in foster care – but only abuse in foster care -  are swamping the state child abuse hotline, making it harder for them and for investigators, to identify real abuse. 

Here’s why that’s b.s. 

In 2022, Oregon’s hotline received 73,278 reports alleging child abuse or neglect.  Also in 2022, 7,410 children spent at least one day in some form of Oregon foster care.  A very rough estimate (projecting from the number in care on any given day) is that fewer than 600 of them spent even one day in a group home or institution. 

So even if every single child who ever spent so much as a day in an Oregon group home or institution were the subject of a report to the Oregon child abuse hotline, that would account for less than one percent of all hotline calls.  Even if every child in any form of foster care for even a single day were reported to the hotline as abused it still would be only 10.1% of the calls. 

So no, allegations about abuse in foster care are not what’s overwhelming the hotline. 

What is overwhelming the hotline are false allegations trivial cases concerning birth parents and cases in which birth parents’ poverty is confused with neglect. 

That is a problem that absolutely could be ameliorated by narrowing definitions.  Because right now here’s how Oregon defines neglect: 

The term ‘abuse’ includes negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child, including but not limited to, the failure to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care that is likely to endanger the health or welfare of the child. 

In other words, there is hardly an impoverished child in Oregon who couldn’t be called into the state hotline as allegedly “neglected.” 

But, despite amending some 90 pages of existing Oregon law, the bill the Governor and DHS want does nothing to change that definition. 

Tomorrow: Some of the awful things the bill would do.

NCCPR news and commentary roundup, week ending December 11, 2024

● You may need to read this excerpt from a story by The Marshall Project and Reveal twice, because the first time you may think: Wait that can’t be right.  Oh yes it can: 

Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those very same substances on subsequent drug tests, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found. 

The positive tests are triggered by medications routinely prescribed to millions of birthing patients in the U.S. every year. The drugs include morphine or fentanyl for epidurals or other pain relief, anxiety medications, and two different blood pressure meds prescribed for C-sections. 

Please keep this in mind whenever you hear politicians and family police agencies fearmonger about parental “drug abuse.” 

● The New York City Family Policy Project has a new report on “The Protective Power of Cash” and what can be done to mobilize that protective power to keep children out of the family policing system. 

● And with the New York City Council scheduled to hold a hearing today (Dec. 12) concerning the city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, I have a column in the New York Daily News that asks “Can ACS stand up to foster care panic?” 

These items are relevant beyond New York because the New York City system is less bad than most. Wherever you are, it’s probably worse. 

In other news:

● The Associated Press reports that President Biden has designated a national monument honoring the Native Americans whose lives were damaged and sometimes destroyed by the network of so-called boarding schools into which so many were forced in an effort to eradicate Native America.  From the story: 

“We’re not about erasing history. We’re about recognizing history — the good, the bad and the ugly,” Biden said. “I don’t want people forgetting 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now and pretend[ing] it didn’t happen.” 

Still, reparations would be better. 

Stealing the children of the poor and the disfavored is a worldwide phenomenon:

● Politico Europe reports on how Belgium did it.  

● The National Catholic Reporter tells the story of how the Vatican, the Italian government and an organization that ultimately would become part of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops conspired to do it.  The story is based on a new book The Price of Children: Stolen Lives in a Land Without Choice. 

60 Minutes also did a story:

One footnote: The book’s author, Maria Laurino told NCR: 

[O]ne of the church's concerns at the time was the growing influence of the Italian Communist Party and fear that if these children, boys in particular, stayed in the country, they could one day join the Communist Party and fight against the church.

If that sounds familiar to American scholars, it may be because when Charles Loring Brace stole impoverished American children and put them on “orphan trains,” starting in the 1850s, his rationale was almost identical.  He feared that impoverished immigrant children might become embittered at the wealth they saw all around them. Then, Brace said, 

“Let …society beware, when the outcast vicious reckless multitude of New York boys swarming now in every foul alley and low street, come to know their power and use it.” [Emphasis in original.]

And finally:

● A transgender former foster youth shook hands with U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace. She had him arrested. And here's an update.

NCCPR in the New York Daily News: Can ACS stand up to foster care panic?

 In 2011, Joette Katz stepped off the Connecticut Supreme Court to take a far more difficult job: running the state Department of Children and Families, Connecticut’s equivalent of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services. 

Within months, the death of a child “known-to-the-system” made headlines. As happened at least twice previously, there were calls to tear apart more families, and enormous pressure on Katz to tell her workers to do just that. In past years, her predecessors had caved. Katz did not. 

“I think in the past that’s been exactly the mistake, frankly,” Katz said at the time. “A child dies and the next thing you know workers are getting thrown under the bus and 500 children get removed [from their homes] the next day because it’s a reaction to a tragedy. I think that’s the exact wrong way to behave.” That’s why, at the time, I called Katz the gutsiest leader in child welfare. 

Now ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser will face the same pressure. Will he have the same kind of guts? Children’s lives may depend on it — literally. ...

Read the full column in the Daily News

NCCPR news and commentary round-up weeks ending December 3, 2024

● Tearing children from their parents because the parents are receiving medication-assisted treatment to control drug addiction doesn’t just impose enormous needless trauma on the children. As The Imprint points out in this two-part series, it also happens to be illegal. But when has the law ever applied to the family police or the family courts? 

And by the way, I wonder how many of the sanctimonious judges who insist that taking a drug every day to remain healthy is just another form of addiction are themselves staying alive in part by doing something I do: taking a statin every day – because we just can’t seem to abstain from fatty foods.

● In The Des Moines Register a Native American parent writes, and speaks, about her experience with the Indian Child Welfare Act.  But read or watch it to the end – the story doesn’t go where you may expect. 

● Brooke Scianna, now age 23, never needed to be torn from her family and institutionalized in a group home when she was 16. Now, KNXV-TV reports, she and her parents have settled a lawsuit against the Arizona family police and the group home for what was done to her there. 

● Two other young people who endured institutionalization write in The Imprint about why such places need to be abolished. 

● A stunning story from Mother Jones and Reveal: When neither the police nor the family police in Florida would believe that Taylor Cadle was being repeatedly raped by her adoptive father she had to gather the evidence herself. She was 12 years old. Taylor had been placed in the home by the Florida Department of Children and Families. 

● ABC News Nightline has followed up on the story of the Georgia mother who was arrested because her 10-year-old son walked a mile from his rural home to their small-town Dollar Store all by himself. The story includes the bodycam video of the arrest. 

● The Boston Globe published a story about caseworker turnover that’s better than most such stories. I have a blog post about the lessons that can be learned from the Globe’s findings. 

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

From the Santa Fe New Mexican 

A 9-year-old boy suffered physical restraint and food restrictions and was secluded in his room during a 2022 stay at a Los Lunas center for children with mental and behavioral health issues, a new lawsuit alleges.  The suit, filed in state District Court in Santa Fe earlier this month, alleges staff at the privately run Sandhill Center abused and neglected children, including the boy, who is now 11. 

The center was understaffed and more interested in the profits from enrollment, and the state Children, Youth and Families Department, which licensed and oversaw the center, was aware of issues at Sandhill and allowed the abuse to happen, the suit alleges. …