Treatment center getting top-to-bottom changes
State regulators had hoped The Heritage of Hannah Neil could maintain its residential program for troubled children while addressing a series of violations. But that optimism apparently didn’t hold after investigators heard from the kids.
In a July 13 email to executives at Eastway Behavioral Healthcare, the nonprofit organization that operates the 40-bed Hannah Neil center, Janel Pequignot of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services said the department had changed its view.
“While MHAS was optimistic that Eastway could maintain its current resident population while instituting change, we no longer believe that to be true,” wrote Pequignot, the chief of standards development and administrative rules with the state mental health department. “Interviews yesterday with residents revealed children still do not feel safe.”
Pequignot asked Dayton-based Eastway to submit a discharge plan, and by Friday afternoon, Hannah Neil no longer had children living in its complex at 301 Obetz Road on the South Side. But the state did not revoke the center’s license, and Eastway is vowing to improve.
Numerous health and safety violations at Hannah Neil were revealed this week by Disability Rights Ohio. The legal advocacy group conducted a ninemonth investigation that included on-site visits and interviews with children, most of whom are in the custody of a county child-protective agency. Disability Rights alerted state and county agencies to their findings.
The Disability Rights report noted inadequate supervision, unsanitary conditions, a lack of programming and the use of “non-therapeutic” interventions such as chokeholds and seclusion. State inspectors, who visited Hannah Neil in late December, also had cited numerous problems, including training deficiencies and incomplete background checks for some employees.
Pequignot’s email also indicated that officials were concerned that Hannah Neil staff might not have been reporting incidents involving children to the county child-protection agencies as required. The exchange references one employee who is believed to have “allowed a resident to hit and kick another child.”
Kerstin Sjoberg, assistant executive director at Disability Rights, said her organization has learned that many Hannah Neil staff members identified in videos have been placed on administrative leave, and that investigations continue.
In a statement emailed to The Dispatch, Eastway CEO John Strahm said his 60-year-old organization is working “to address all rule violations” at Hannah Neil. He said administrators have begun a top-to-bottom restructuring. “This includes new leadership, a re-examination of all policies and procedures, and an extensive review of hiring practices, staff training, role definition, and staff expectations.”
Strahm said Eastway pledges “to restore Hannah Neil’s residential program to those standards of care that we have always worked so hard to achieve and to regain the confidence of the public, state service institutions and our clients.”
In the meantime, Hannah Neil continues to provide outpatient and day-treatment services.
The original Hannah Neil program was named for a community activist who started a refuge for homeless children in Columbus in 1868. Starr Commonwealth of Albion, Michigan, took it over in the late 1970s and closed the complex in 2013. Eastway bought it for $2.7 million, renovated it and began receiving children in early 2016.