Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Troubled Teen Industry

tampa bay academy

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Anonymous:

--- Quote ---osted by ( historyinshort ) on 01/07/2009 at 06:53 pm.

I was a resident at TBA several years ago when i was in my teens. Luckily i was only there for 2 weeks before my mother realized the terrible conditions and removed me for placement in a RTF that actually helped me with my substance abuse problems and depression. TBA was an absolutely awful place to live even for 14 days. It remains the worst 14 days of my life. The staff was completly oblivious to what was going on. The kids were out of control and the builings themselves were dirty and horrible. Not a good place for "recovery". I was elated to hear that such a travesty of a "treatment" center is finally being shut down. There are FAR better resources in FL for troubled kids TBA was NOT one. I agree that even a short stint in that place could do more damage to a child than when they went in. 3 cheers!!
--- End quote ---

Anonymous sources are not reliable.

Ursus:
An 11th hour letter to the Editor:

-------------- • -------------- • -------------- • --------------

Letters To The Editor
The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 7, 2009

Priorities Upside Down

During my 12-year tenure as a state legislator in New Hampshire, I had the responsibility at one point to serve as chairman of the House Committee on State Institutions in order to oversee the operation and standards of our Youth Development Center (YDC) along with other state facilities. Governmental overview of state institutions is always needed, although experience shows that it is seldom productive.

From my appraisal of the situation as reported in the Tribune, it would seem that Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration is overlooking some important issues by recommending the removal of the license for Tampa Bay Academy.

Priorities seem to be all upside down. Children in need of 24-hour mental health care are being removed from unhealthy and dangerous surroundings, and yet only one-third of the employees who oversee their protection and care are being removed. In addition, two-thirds of the rest of this same group of negligent and inattentive personnel are sheltered from the agency's order by virtue of their positions in the academy's group homes and charter school and therefore retain their jobs, salaries, health care benefits and pensions.

Why retain 15 staff members to rebuild another facility like the substandard one they now manage? Wouldn't it make more sense to start at the top? To dismiss the current managerial staff and bring in new individuals with better credentials who would, in turn, qualify and dismiss inadequate and disinterested personnel at all levels and replace them with compassionate, caring and well-educated caretakers?

Coincidentally, the cost to remove 15 at the top of the food chain might even help balance the agency budget and allow the hiring of a couple of new therapists.

ELSIE VARTANIAN
Tampa

Anonymous:
Ok,  one desparate letter to the tribune.Please tell how this all played out. I know as far as TBA is concerned, all that is in the past, and I'm sure nothing that happened last year could ever happen again. Right? I just know my friends daughter is in
30 days of hell, and will be angrier, and even more distrutful than before.

Ursus:

--- Quote from: "none-ya" ---I know as far as TBA is concerned, all that is in the past, and I'm sure nothing that happened last year could ever happen again. Right?
--- End quote ---
Maybe they are on a three-year cycle. It happened in 2005, 2008... TBA would be due for another bout with local oversight agencies in 2011, so I think your friend's daughter is probably safe this year.

  :clown:

J/K. Seriously, look at who owns it: (for-profit) Youth and Family Centered Services Inc., based in Austin, Texas. I think they have facilities in nine states, IIRC. They do not have an especially good record.

Ursus:
...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."

-------------- • -------------- • -------------- • --------------

State Suspends Tampa Bay Academy's License
By ADAM EMERSON  | The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 9, 2009
Updated: 01/09/2009 07:52 pm

The 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 Correction

Fifty-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 Credentials

Such 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.

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