I believe we all expected that in this day and age Georgia would have strict laws governing who can dispense prescription medications in Residential Child Care Facilities. What we have discovered, quite painfully and at the expense of our children, is that Georgia is backwards and does not protect the children in their state with simple, concise laws and regulations. We've also discovered that people such as Bucci will exploit every weakness to his advantage to get his greedy paws on a dollar and it will be at the expense of your child's health and well-being.
I specifically asked about the medical staff and how medications were administered/dispensed and was told HLA had a full-time nurse on staff. I was led to believe the full-time nurse was a requirement because of some Georiga law. Boy were we wrong. Unfortunately we didn't find this out until AFTER incidents starting occuring and HLA was called out on the carpet for these incidents. Ah, but disclose an issue at HLA and all of sudden you're labeled as being difficult and not working with the program. What's even more unbelievable is staff there trying to deny medications were dispensed incorrectly or that kids ran out of medications and went without them for days. We were also led to believe that HLA was a LICENSED therapeutic boarding school - the state of Georgia does not license or recognize TBS's. Imagine the shock when we called the state to inquire about licensure and found out the only rules/laws/regulations that applied to HLA could be those that applied to say a tent & awning company because HLA was only registered as a regular business AND, most important to remember, is that HLA fought licensure for years until we all stepped in and threatened legal action against the state for failing to protect these children.
The bottom-line is HLA marketed themselves as having top-notch staff who would provide excellent care and treatment for our children. There was a high expectation from my perspective that HLA would provide what was promised, but they failed miserably. Did they break any laws? I would actually say no because those laws never applied to them because they were never licensed. If anything good has come from this it is the fact that we have helped put measures in place to ensure the safety and well-being of any child who may be placed in one of Bucci's programs. It won't stop there though - that I will promise you.
What do you want a link to? Call Kit Wallace at DHR/ORS and asked her to send you a copy of the report.
There are reports from Ridge Creek as well in which the kids told the state officials exactly what was going on.
You have been given the POCs to obtain the data; either go get it and get the facts or stop wasting our time with the same moronic question - "Link?"
Guest99, I have been following your posts. I understand that you were told that a nurse would be distributing the meds and instead an unlicensed person was doing the job. As a parent I would be mad too. I may even pull my child if I had one there. That is why we have been having this conversation. We have researched the laws and found that there was no license required to dispense medication, which surprised me. You only needed a person with a GED with oversight which was not clearly defined. Does this mean a procedure for each med written by the pharmacist? A direct report to a licensed person? Or someone who can read labels off the medication jars? This is where we are at. HLA did have several nurses and a pharmacy technician at various times there.
Was HLA in violation at any one point? Probably, that is what inspections are for. They detect and uncover violations write them up and give the violators time to respond, resolve the issues and implement corrective action. If the school continues to ignore the laws than they lose their license.
But so far there doesnt seem to be any evidence that any laws were broken (on the issue of dispensing drugs).
