The company that manages Arkansas' four youth lockups was delayed in reporting at least 110 incidents involving children in its care since the firm took over management of all facilities July 1.
Additionally, Nevada-based Rite of Passage Inc. was slow to provide medical assessments for 21 kids, didn't properly record observation of youths in confinement or "self-timeouts" for mental health reasons, and didn't hold school for at least three required days at the Mansfield facility, according to a letter sent last week from a state procurement office to Michael Cantrell, the corporation's executive director.
These actions are all in violation of the firm's state-awarded contract.
The Aug. 17 letter, signed by the state's chief procurement officer, Mary Williams, requires that a corrective action plan be sent within 10 days to the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Rite of Passage was awarded a more than $70 million contract that ends in 2023 to manage all of the state's youth lockups.
A corrective action plan is listed as the consequence of a vendor's first incident of violating a term of the contract, according to a Department of Human Services document outlining performance-based standards. On the second instance, a vendor can face fines.
Before July 1, Rite of Passage managed only the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center in Alexander. Now, the for-profit company has day-to-day control over all the state's juvenile facilities.
The youth lockups, as of Friday, housed 173 Arkansas kids who judges across the state determined couldn't be treated at home for a variety of offenses, such as drug-related charges, assault or theft. As a part of Gov. Asa Hutchinson's planned overhaul of the juvenile justice system, the state has recently shifted focus to a more community-based form of providing services to children closer to their homes, when possible.
The reporting delays occurred during the transition when Rite of Passage took over management of the Dermott, Harrisburg and Mansfield facilities in July. Previously, those three facilities were managed by Youth Opportunity Investments Inc., an Indiana-based company.
"These are pretty basic things that we deal with in our world and this is clearly not a pattern of how we do things," Cantrell wrote in a Friday email to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "We were transitioning and re-setting a culture in the three programs" the company was taking over.
In a Thursday interview, Michael Crump, Division of Youth Services director, confirmed that the delays occurred because of the transition and said most of the issues had been fixed.
In most instances, Rite of Passage called to report incidents to the state's on-call system or law enforcement authorities, but it did not properly report to RiteTrack, the system the state uses to track its investigations. The delays in reporting caused a backlog in investigations, Crump said.
The letter requesting a corrective action plan says that in some instances, no call was made to the Division of Youth Services' on-call staff.
Employees have eight hours after they learn about an incident to report it to RiteTrack.
Rite of Passage trains its employees in reporting incidents of possible maltreatment to law enforcement authorities or the state. Not all staff members have access to the RiteTrack system, Cantrell said.
The firm has hired 119 new staffers "and counting" to run the facilities, Cantrell said in an email.
He added that previously, more time was allowed to enter incidents into RiteTrack.
The system helps the state investigate what happened and whether action needs to be taken. In one instance, Rite of Passage suspended an employee for one day for allowing a youth into a restricted area to get a soda. The staffer was retrained in supervision and boundaries, said Amy Webb, a spokeswoman for the Human Services Department.
In an instance mentioned in a July 30 email from juvenile ombudsman Brooke Digby to Keesa Smith, deputy director for children, youth and families, Digby tried to find documentation of an incident involving "poor boundaries" with a youth, but couldn't find the information.
There have been a handful of instances in the past when Rite of Passage failed to report incidents quickly to RiteTrack, Smith said.
"As it pertains to the transition, we were starting to see trends, which was why we did the corrective action plan," Smith said in an interview.
Assessments of youths' health, including physical and mental health, should be completed within 10 business days, according to the state's letter. At the Alexander facility, the assessments weren't completed within that time in at least 21 instances.
Timely medical assessments are key to ensuring that children placed in a facility begin treatment within three weeks, Crump said. The sooner kids begin their time at a facility, the sooner they can get back home. Some medical assessments were taking a few days longer.
A letter about the issue was sent to Alexander's facility director, Jasen Kelly, on July 17, "yet this requirement is still out of compliance," the August letter reads.
"We're trying to hold them [Rite of Passage] accountable for that," Crump added. "We want to start their [the kids'] treatment as quickly as possible."
Some delays were because staff members were quarantined after exposure to covid-19, Crump said.
Cantrell said lapses were also caused by coronavirus procedures. All students are tested upon arrival, and the medical department screens them, he said. On average, tests take at least three days for results, which delays other assessments.
On July 6, state staffers sent a letter of concern to Marlon Morrow, a regional executive director with Rite of Passage, concerning lack of monitoring for youths who were in their rooms for behavioral health reasons.
That same day, youth services administrators saw youths in their rooms for staff-directed timeouts, room confinement or self-timeouts for behavioral health reasons with no documented room checks.
Room checks are supposed to occur every 15 minutes.
Cantrell said each unit has a logbook for checks and a roll call for when youths are off-unit -- at school or in the dining hall.
He said the issue was that "staff did have line of sight of the youth but did not document that."
Daily residential logbooks were reviewed by a division deputy director on Aug. 5, and one did not show any log entries for the preceding four hours, according to the letter requesting a corrective action plan.
"There has to be some record of the fact that they've done these checks," Crump said. "It's not so much that we know they didn't do those checks. ... It was a matter of not documenting these things."
The letter also says that on July 7, 16 and 17, school was not held at the Mansfield center, and the state wasn't notified. The summer session for the youth services facilities was scheduled for July 6-31. There were 28 children at Mansfield as of Friday.
The state learned about the July 16 and 17 missed school days from security camera footage, according to the letter.
Cantrell said internet problems and residents' refusal to wear masks caused the missed days. The internet has been an ongoing issue, he added.
"It should also be noted, that we have been cautious in school setting and dealing with keeping social distancing practices which all plays a major part in school schedules and participation," he wrote in his email to the newspaper.
An online news release from Rite of Passage says work was completed at Mansfield for setting boundaries with the kids, for improving security and for new staff members to get to know the kids.
At least 12 children escaped from the Mansfield Juvenile Treatment Center from July 2018 to July 2019, before Rite of Passage took over.
Since then, the state has improved fencing at the facility.
Division of Youth Services Deputy Director Glenn Holt, the state's quality assurance team and other monitors will ensure the corrective action plan Rite of Passage submits is followed, Crump said.
"We wanted to go ahead and send that corrective action plan and move forward," Smith said. "We also don't want to continue to push these issues down the road. We want to address them immediately."