TREATMENT
the children,” said Jamie Carmichael, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
“We thought it would be best to have the patients out of the setting while we work with them to improve,” Carmichael said Thursday.
Most of the children at Hannah Neil are in the custody of a county childprotection agency. Any child still there is to leave the center Friday, according to an agreement between the center and the department, which oversees licensing of behavioral-health residential facilities.
Dayton-based Eastway Behavioral Healthcare, which bought the dormant Hannah Neil complex a few years ago, has been receiving children at the site since early 2016. The Dispatch visited the center shortly after its opening, when administrators were eager to show off the renovation. Calls to the center about the state investigation’s findings weren’t immediately returned Thursday.
“I don’t know specifically why things went awry,” said Kerstin Sjoberg, assistant executive director of Disability Rights Ohio.
The legal advocacy group became aware of complaints about Hannah Neil and began conducting on-site visits last year, alerting state and county agencies along the way. Disability Rights said its nine-month investigation found that children, some as young as 5 or 6, were exposed to:
• Aggressive, abusive or unresponsive behavior by employees, some of whom grabbed children by their necks or carried them by their arms. At other times, staff members didn’t intervene in fights.
• Improper restraint techniques, including headlocks and isolation in bedrooms, with employees holding the children’s doors shut.
• Unsanitary living conditions and exploitation. Investigators said many units had strong odors, stained floors, holes in walls and bathrooms with no soap. During one visit, children said they were expected to clean, paint and scrub the center for “Community Day” at Hannah Neil.
• Insufficient activities and programming. “The lack of activities and programming on second shift was very apparent, as children would sit in front of the television for the whole shift,” the Disability Rights report said. “The children did not appear to be engaged in anything, let alone any activity or interaction of therapeutic value.”
The state has reviewed all Disability Rights findings, Carmichael said, and had conducted its own review in late December. Hannah Neil was cited for several problems then, including a lack of documentation for training and incomplete background checks for some employees.
Hannah Neil first voluntarily halted new admissions until it could correct violations. But as the investigation continued, the state decided that all the children should relocate, Carmichael said.
Franklin County Children Services had 10 children at Hannah Neil, but all were removed from the center last month, spokeswoman Deborrha Armstrong said. She said the county had been aware of potential problems at Hannah Neil since February.
“We increased our visits. We made announced and unannounced visits,” Armstrong said.
Child-welfare agencies often struggle to find appropriate placements for children with intensive behavioral or emotional needs, she said. Residential centers are rarely a first choice.
“Our goal is to have enough really good foster parents to place children with, and of course, kinship placements,” Armstrong said. “We really do want our children to have family-like settings.”
Sjoberg, of Disability Rights, said caseworkers are required to visit children in residential centers regularly, and they do. But she wonders whether those who checked on kids at Hannah Neil also walked throughout the center. “I would think they would have been alarmed if they’d gone through there,” she said.
The original Hannah Neil program, one of the city’s oldest, was named for a community activist who started a refuge for homeless children in post-Civil War Columbus in 1868. Starr Commonwealth of Albion, Michigan, took it over in the late 1970s. It closed in 2013 — after having served some 35,000 kids — and was empty until Eastway took over.