Associated Press
SEATTLE — Unannounced visits in 2016 to 20 foster-care group homes in Washington revealed that every one of them failed to meet at least one state licensing requirement, according to an audit report released by federal officials on Thursday.
The report released by the U.S. Office of Inspector General shows that none of the group homes fully complied with medical-safety requirements and nearly all of them failed to meet one or more environmental-, space- or equipment-safety standards, The Seattle Times reported.
In addition, 16 of the homes had employees who failed to complete or pass required background checks; 11 didn’t meet food-safety standards; and seven facilities ran afoul of fire-safety or emergency-practices requirements.
The report recommended that Washington ensure all state-licensed group homes address the identified problems, as well as strengthen its supervision of such foster-care facilities, including by conducting more unannounced visits and running even more background checks than are now required.
“The unannounced visits and the FBI fingerprint checks are the most important (recommendations) for protecting this vulnerable population of children,” Gopa Guha, an Office of Inspector General senior auditor, said Wednesday.
Officials with Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services, which oversees foster care in this state, have agreed with the audit’s findings, have implemented some recommendations and plan to soon adopt the others, Guha said.
The agency “has already proposed fixes to the issues identified in the report, including developing training for Children’s Administration and group home staff on medication management; adding facility inspections to the quarterly health and safety monitoring we are already doing; and other solutions,” agency spokeswoman Norah West said in an email to the newspaper.
After recent national-media reports highlighted cases in which children died while in foster care, Congress raised concerns about the safety of such group homes, prompting the federal audits.
The federal Office of Inspector General conducted reviews to determine how four states — Washington, Massachusetts, Ohio and Oklahoma — were monitoring health- and safety-licensing requirements at 24-hour group-care facilities that serve special-needs foster kids who are unable to live in family foster homes.
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