IA Group Home Caregiver Pleads Guilty to Financial Exploitation

A former caregiver at a Skyline Center group home pleaded guilty to financially exploiting two residents.
Anitra D. Enriquez pleaded guilty to two counts of dependant adult abuse, financial exploitation and received fines of $100 and $65.

According to court documents, Enriquez served as a Skyline caregiver at a group home at 272 36th Ave.

Samantha Kress, a Skyline employee, reported strange withdraws on the bank accounts of two dependent adults living at the group home at 272 36th Ave. North, according to the affidavit.

According to court documents, caregivers have access to residents’ accounts for dependent adult care.

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Woman Pleads Guilty to Financial Exploitation

Recommended Website: The National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care

The Consumer Voice is actively fighting to end the misuse of antipsychotic drugs as chemical restraints.

Our campaign seeks to address this problem through:

• Legislation
 •Regulation and Guidance
•Education

Residents of long-term care facilities are increasingly being placed on antipsychotic medications despite having no proper diagnosis to warrant their use. Twenty-six percent (26%) of all nursing home residents are given antipsychotic medications. Use is even higher (nearly 40%) among residents with dementia – the very individuals that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns are at serious risk of medical complications and death from taking antipsychotics. In addition, far too often the dangers of these medications are not even discussed with residents and their families and are administered without consent.

Source:
TheConsumerVoice.org

$900K Settlement for Death at Washington State Adult-Family Home

For 22 days, caregivers at a Kirkland adult-family home guarded a secret.

An elderly woman at Houghton Lakeview suffered from pressure sores that had burrowed to the bone. No one called her family. No one alerted a doctor.

The state of Washington harbored a secret, too.

Investigators had cited Houghton Lakeview 33 times for inadequate care and substandard conditions. Two caregivers were convicted felons, barred from such work. Two others had forged nursing credentials. The public was never warned — nor were the residents in the home.

By the time the woman was rushed to the emergency room, it was too late. Jean Rudolph, 87, a retired nursing educator who had Alzheimer’s disease, died in 2008 from untreated pressure sores.

The state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) and the owner’s insurance company agreed to a $900,000 settlement this week with the Rudolph family.

This rare settlement reveals a state regulatory system torn between dual roles: booster of the industry as a way to control costs, as well as enforcer of its failings. With rising numbers of low-income seniors in need of long-term care, Washington and dozens of states are banking on these residential facilities as alternatives to more costly nursing homes.

The risk to the public, says attorney Tony Shapiro, who represented the Rudolph family, occurs when state agencies like DSHS form a “bunker mentality” and excuse violators to preserve existing adult homes.

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$900,000 for Death at Kirkland Adult-Family Home

WI Group Home Caretaker Charged With Stealing $24K From Patients

A Burlington woman is facing nine counts of felony theft after an investigation by the Burlington Police Department found that she stole more than $24,000 from three mentally disabled men who lived in her group home.

According to the criminal complaint, police first became aware that the defendant, Becky Ann Borucki, 56, operator of Burucki Group Home, was stealing from the residents, when they were contacted by the legal guardian of one of the residents of the home.

The guardian told police her brother’s bank had contacted her about his checking account. She said she then found numerous discrepancies on the account that all related back to Borucki.

Through bank records, the guardian and police discovered that approximately $8,629 had been removed from her brother’s banking account between Aug. 10, 2011, and Jan. 4 via unauthorized transactions, according to the complaint. The amount also included overdraft fees charged to her 50-year-old brother by the bank.

Officers then had the legal guardians of two other residents of the home check to see if any monies had been stolen from their family members.

Borucki has been charged with five counts of felony theft-movable property and three counts of felony personal ID theft. If convicted on all counts, she could face up to 58 years in prison and fines totalling $105,000.

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Group Home Caretaker Charged With Stealing $24,000 From Patients

Report Criticizes KY Care Homes

Personal care homes in Kentucky serve as little more than warehouses for their mentally disabled residents, violating their right to live in communities that afford them more freedom and meaningful activities, a watchdog group contends in a new report.

“We’ve got to find a better way to serve folks with mental health issues,” said Marsha Hockensmith, executive director of Kentucky Protection and Advocacy, which produced the report released Monday.

It details a survey of 218 residents at 20 personal care homes throughout Kentucky. Hockensmith said she believes the findings represent overall conditions for the 4,400 people who live in 81 “free-standing” state-licensed facilities — meaning they are not part of a larger institution, such as a nursing home.

The report found that some personal care homes are dirty, in poor repair, restrict access — one kept residents behind a locked chain-link fence — and regiment meals, bedtimes and activities such as smoking breaks or telephone calls. Residents reported feeling isolated and having little involvement with the community.

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Report Critices Kentucky Care Homes

Group Home Employee Arrested for Assault

A 49-year-old group home employee has been arrested after police say he assaulted one of the residents, a vulnerable adult.

On Wednesday night, police were called to a group home for disabled adults, located at 3701 W El Camino Drive.

The supervisor of the group home called police to report an employee witnessed another employee assaulting one of the patients.

The witness told officers he had just observed 49-year-old La Marcus Dixon slap the victim in the face, the back of the head and neck. When the witness coworker tried to stop Dixon, he allegedly continued slapping.

The victim, who is known to react to stress by banging his head on objects, started hitting his head against the bathroom wall.

The victim has a mental impairment which includes autism and mental retardation.

Dixon denied touching or assaulting the victim. He was placed under arrest on one count of vulnerable adult abuse.

Source:
Caretaker Accused of Adult Abuse

Questions Surround State Agency in Wake of Autistic Man’s Death

Hundreds of thousands of Americans suffer from developmental disabilities like cerebral palsy and mental retardation. In California, some of the most severely disabled are cared for at several state-run facilities with around-the-clock supervision.

But while the state spends about $300,000 a year on each patient, an investigation by Eyewitness News media partner California Watch has uncovered a pattern of abuse and neglect at the centers and a failure to hold staff and administrators accountable.

When he was a child, Van Ingraham was diagnosed with mental retardation and severe autism. As he grew older, his family found they could not cope with his disabilities.

“It became very clear that he was not going to be able to ever talk or function on his own, in society,” said Larry Ingraham.

The Ingrahams turned to Fairview Developmental Center in Orange County. It’s one of five state-run institutions in California for those with severe developmental disabilities, serving roughly 2,000 patients who need full-time supervision and care.

“We would go up and visit and Van seemed happy there,” said Larry.

But one day in 2007, Larry Ingraham, a retired police officer, got a call that his brother Van had been rushed to the hospital.

“He was in ICU, intensive care, Hoag Memorial Hospital,” said Larry. “I’ve seen a lot of bad sights in my life, but this is one of the worst.”

The staff at Fairview Developmental Center said Van had simply fallen out of bed. But a neurosurgeon at the hospital said Van’s injury was no accident.

“They said either your brother was bodysurfing at The Wedge in Huntington Beach and had a severe impact into the sand with a large wave, or somebody did this to your brother,” said Larry.

Van Ingraham died as result of his injuries.

If Van had been an ordinary citizen, his death would likely have been investigated by local police. But California’s developmental centers have their own in-house police force, hired by the same administrators who run the centers. In Van’s case, those in-house police waited five days before interviewing potential suspects.

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Questions Surround State Agency in Wake of Autistic Man’s Death

Group Home Worker Indicted

Melinda Burns, 25, was indicted by a Hunterdon County Grand Jury on Feb. 16 on a charge of theft by unlawful taking, third degree.

Burns was a group home employee and allegedly stole money from the bank account of a woman entrusted to her care.

An investigation by Delaware Township police and the county Prosecutor’s Office was launched in April after a discrepancy was found in the woman’s financial records, said Patrolman Mark Kobner.

He said that Burns worked full-time at the group home, which he declined to identify, and provided care for the young woman, who was born with a syndrome marked by physical, mental and behavioral problems.

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Group Home Worker in Hunterdon Indicted on Charge of Stealing From Woman in Her Care

Hunderdon County Caretakers Sentenced to 3 Years

The owner of a state-licensed home for disabled adults in Bloomsbury and a former government caseworker were sentenced [Feb 3rd] to three years in state prison in connection with the neglect of three women who had been under their care, including two who later died.

The owner, Debra Sloan, 57, and the former caseworker from the state Department of Human Services, Bridget Grimes, 55, of Phillipsburg, pleaded guilty last year to neglect of a disabled person and theft, the Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office said.

Grimes also pleaded guilty to official misconduct.

It was the first time in recent history that a department caseworker was held criminally liable for failing to provide proper care, the department said.

From 2002 to 2008, Sloan and Grimes were responsible for the care of the three women — Tara O’Leary, Erin Germaine and Lydia Joy Perry — who court records show suffered from serious neglect.

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Hunterdon County Caretakers Sentenced to 3 Years in State Prison After 2 Women Died From Neglect

KY Group Home Proprietor Defends His Operation

Most of the men living on a campus of three aging homes off Versailles Road have mental illness or developmental disabilities.

They come from all walks of life, but typically, they have been released from psychiatric hospitals, prisons and personal care homes. Eight of the more than 70 men at Messner Home Inc. are veterans, six are wards of the state and two are former foster children who have turned 18 and aged out of the system.

“I get the ones that nobody else wants,” said owner Ralph Messner, whose late mother opened a halfway house in Lexington in 1959 that evolved into the current private operation.

Messner, 77, said he runs a good home and often works more than 65 hours a week to meet the needs of the residents. But Kentucky officials have been investigating allegations of poor living conditions and have expressed a concern about the lack of government oversight at the homes for at least the second time since 1996.

Officials from Kentucky Protection and Advocacy, an independent state agency mandated by federal law to protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities, received a complaint that led to visits beginning in August, said executive director Marsha Hockensmith.

“Bed bugs, lack of cleanliness, lack of proper bedding, lack of privacy, and problems with the physical structure” are among the issues that Protection and Advocacy found, Hockensmith said.

Messner is upset that Kentucky Protection and Advocacy has been investigating the home. He said Veterans Administration officials told him in May that the home looked the best it had looked in seven years.

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Proprietor of Care Home in Lexington Defends His Operation