Billion Dollar Children for Profit Industry: Foster Care Deaths and Sexual Abuses

National Mentor Holdings Board Members – Photo Courtesy of Buzzfeed.com

Board Members Of Troubled Foster-Care Company Have Little To Say About Abuses

by Talal Ansari and Aram Roston
Buzzfeed.com

Excerpts:

A recent BuzzFeed News investigation into the nation’s largest for-profit foster care company revealed deaths, sex abuse, and serious lapses in the training and oversight of foster parents.

The investigation into National Mentor Holdings found instances of long-term sex abuse in Maryland by Mentor foster fathers, widespread problems with Mentor documented by the state of Texas, and at least six deaths of children in the custody of Mentor since 2005.

Mentor trades on the New York Stock Exchange as Civitas Solutions Inc., which reported $1.2 billion in revenue last year. Companies can often seem faceless, but like all public companies, Civitas is governed by a board of directors.

BuzzFeed News decided to find out whether members of the board knew about the problems exposed by the recent investigation, and if so, ask what they planned to do about it.

State and local governments have long worked with nonprofits and religious groups to help find good homes for children whose parents can’t care for them. But over the past several decades, for-profit companies have started winning contracts to manage foster care placements. Former Mentor employees said that the pressure to make profits sometimes led to Mentor cutting corners on protecting the children — a charge Mentor strongly disputed in BuzzFeed News’ original story.

Read the full article here.

Published on March 19, 2015

2 Comments

sandycee89 May 25, 2015 at 4:49 pm - Reply

CPS is unconstitutional. NOT HYPERBOLE!! Huge cadre of parasites, hugely salaried (“professionals”), get paid to wad their wallets at the expense of children’s safety courtesy of unaware taxed succuhs. THIS VICIOUS CYCLE MUST STOP!!

Sue Taylor March 21, 2015 at 12:21 pm - Reply

we need to cut off their funding, if every time they took a child, if the Federal funds had to go to the child when they turned 18, this might stop them.  This department has no oversight, it acts independently of all other government agencies and is totally out of control, this reminds me of what they said happened during Nazi Germany.  cut their funding, demand a child advocate and demand accountability from our governmental reps.  Including jail time for those caught lying and lying on reports and files.  I am all for getting the bad guy and protecting the children but this entire agency needs to be scrapped and remade from the ashes.