...And the axe comes down. Even the original founder, Malcolm "Mac" Harriman, says that current owners
Youth and Family Centered Services (Austin, TX) have "an ethical choice to go out of business."
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State Suspends Tampa Bay Academy's LicenseBy ADAM EMERSON | The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 9, 2009
Updated: 01/09/2009 07:52 pmThe state officially stopped the Tampa Bay Academy today from providing long-term mental health care to the most troubled children, but the academy's problems aren't unique to its corporate parent in Texas.
The mental health center's last-minute attempt to show regulators it could fix its problems didn't prevent the state from suspending its license. Officials with Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration said they are reviewing the academy's improvement plan, but they already have ordered its children moved to other facilities.
While the move is rare for state regulators, the academy's owner, Youth and Family Centered Services in Austin, has received similar reprimands in the past. The company operates a dozen other properties in eight states that provide mental health care to youngsters.
News reports and government records show that the Texas company's treatment services have provoked strong rebukes from child advocates and state agencies for many of the same problems inspectors found at the Tampa Bay Academy.
Three years ago, officials with Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare removed the children from the residential treatment facilities at Southwood Psychiatric Hospital in Allegheny County. The hospital, owned by Youth and Family Centered Services, exposed its children to broken windows, the stench of urine in bedrooms and inadequate staffing, among other problems, reports show.
In late 2006, Florida juvenile justice officials demanded improvement of the counseling services PsychSolutions Inc. provided to teens locked up at a Palm Beach County detention center. PsychSolutions, a South Florida company owned by Youth and Family Centered Services, instead pulled out of its contract.
Child advocates and mental health care experts say such actions are only symptoms of the forces driving for-profit companies that provide such care. The more children these companies enroll in their programs, the more money they earn.
"Kids aren't cogs on a wheel," said Brian Cabrey, a Jacksonville lawyer and the vice president of Florida's Children First, a child advocacy group. "You have to be seriously suspicious of any for-profit corporation. Despite the best of intentions, they frequently devolve into what we're seeing at Tampa Bay Academy."
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration reported last month that conditions at the Tampa Bay Academy's residential treatment center were "substandard." Inspectors found evidence that residents sexually preyed on workers and on each other - all made easier by the failures of a poorly trained and inadequate staff.
Kevin Sheehan, the president and chief executive of Youth and Family Centered Services, declined to speak today with the Tribune. An assistant said he was traveling to meetings out of state.
A Plan Of CorrectionFifty-four children were enrolled at Tampa Bay Academy's residential treatment program, and all were placed in other centers by today. A group home program and a charter school on the academy's campus in Riverview weren't affected by the agency's order.
Because of the treatment center's closure, the academy recently laid off about 140 workers – more than a third of its staff.
On Thursday, academy chief executive Rich Warden sent regulators a 470-page correction plan, assuring them the center will schedule enough workers and report incidents immediately to law enforcement when necessary.
Fernando Senra, a spokesman for the Health Care Administration, said if the academy wants to restore its license, it must be ready to fulfill every promise it made in its plan.
Back in 2005, the academy made a similar plea to the Department of Children & Families, which then regulated the treatment center.
DCF stopped the academy from admitting new patients for three months after finding many of the same problems the Health Care Administration found last month: inadequate staffing, abuse complaints and an alleged sexual assault on a patient.
Satisfied with the results of subsequent inspections, the agency later allowed the academy to resume admissions.
Now, the academy's problems have come full circle, and to its founder, the recent troubles have been "disturbing."
Malcolm "Mac" Harriman of Brandon opened the academy in 1988 to provide long-term care to severely troubled children whose options mostly consisted of short stays in "money-grubbing" psychiatric hospitals, he said.
"I had a goal to create a very special place," Harriman said last week.
In 1996, he sold the company to Youth Services International Inc. in a deal valued at $5.25 million, the Dow Jones news service reported then. Youth and Family Centered Services Inc. bought the company from YSI two years later.
Today, Youth and Family Centered Services owns 13 properties and boasts, on its brochure, annual revenues of $150 million.
Profits And CredentialsSuch corporate buying-and-selling in the mental health care world has proliferated, said Robert Friedman, a professor at the University of South Florida and an expert on children's mental health.
The for-profit treatment programs cause the most concern among experts. Too often, these companies are trying to maximize profits by cutting back staff.
Two years ago, lawyers who investigated the Palm Beach County juvenile detention center said they found an inadequate and overwhelmed staff at its mental health care provider, PsychSolutions.
William Booth, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Advocacy Project, participated in a snap inspection of the juvenile detention center in 2006 and found a worker in the PsychSolutions office there reading a novel.
While he ultimately holds the Department of Juvenile Justice responsible for the substandard care, Booth said recently that PsychSolutions "was not performing the job."
Harriman, however, says that for-profit mental health care providers have been unfairly branded. He says nonprofit providers also can be negligent, and the state fails to provide enough assistance to treatment centers that enroll children who suffer from the most severe mental illnesses – from schizophrenia to sexual trauma.
Still, the owners of the Tampa Bay Academy have "an ethical choice to go out of business," Harriman said.
Researcher Michael Messano contributed to this report. Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285.©2009 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC.