SERVICE PROVIDERS DISCUSS HOW DCF MOVES AROUND CLIENTS TO PAD STATISTICS

The service providers from several agencies sat in a room with this writer not long ago with a story of deception and dangerous clients. It is reported that the Department of Children and Families frequently use their position and financial wealth for the purposes of "client dumping." Let me be clear. This is what the service providers said to the writer. "DCF will send us one client or more with very little notice or paper work. When we receive the client in many instances he or she is older and not appropriate for our program. Then it is said that the client is only going to stay at our facility for a few days. After the allotted time draws near DCF will manipulate the situation and the client is now staying longer." I asked what is the purpose of all the duplicity and intrigue by DCF and got this reply. "DCF is under a Consent Decree and must improve client services and outcomes. The Consent Decree has been in place for years and is meant to help DCF clean up cases of clients being lost in the system or not receiving adequate care. However in order for DCF to have higher scores from Consent Decree monitors, clients are sent to any facility that DCF can dump them at. Then this state funded agency can check the client (s) off a list for Consent Decree monitors to peruse."

Another service provider runs an agency for specific clients with targeted age limits. But DCF often sends clients who are physically aggressive... low functioning intellectually and prone to run away. Again the scenario goes like this "DCF gives some discharge date for the person , yet one day before the scheduled release an official from DCF calls and asks for a extension for the client. This game is played for three - four weeks and the agency caring for the client becomes frustrated." If the agency is fuming over this shell game what about the client's feelings ?

Please let it be noted how most of the clients mentioned in this story getting sent to inappropriate agencies for treatment are black...Hispanic. In the final analysis maybe that is why this happens. Just saying.