Shelters’ employee screening is faulted

State: Migrant kids not in ‘immediate jeopardy’

Arizona health officials found that Southwest Key facilities housing migrant children failed on multiple occasions to properly check the backgrounds of their employees, some of whom have been accused of sexually abusing children there.

But state officials said a series of unannounced inspections of those facilities this month found nothing that would put the migrant children in “immediate jeopardy.”

The state Department of Health Services on Thursday released the results of its snap inspections, launched after The Arizona Republic reported last month on allegations of sex abuse at facilities in Tucson and Glendale.

Further reporting by The Republic and others, including ProPublica, uncovered other instances of abuse at the shelters, which intensified pressure to take a harder look at the operations.

Gov. Doug Ducey voiced his concern last month.

Health Services also reached agreement with Southwest Key on voluntary measures that will give the state more oversight, including unannounced inspections at the company’s 13 shelters and a Sept. 14 deadline to ensure all of Southwest Key’s estimated 2,061 employees have a valid fingerprint clearance card.

Southwest Key spokesman Jeff Eller said the agency welcomes expanded oversight, noting that it is similar to what the non-profit organization already is required to do in California and Texas.

The inspections revealed little about the incidents of abuse that triggered the investigation. And despite the added oversight, state officials say it’s hard to prevent criminal behavior.

Department of Health Services Director Cara Christ said the agency has limited jurisdiction to act, noting that its oversight generally involves the physical premises. Issues of abuse and neglect are referred to local law enforcement.

There have been three known arrests of Southwest Key shelter workers from three different facilities.

Abuse allegations uncovered by the media included shelter workers who inappropriately touched boys in the genital area and attempted to perform sex acts on them.

Other allegations involved a staff member at the Glendale facility making inappropriate comments to a young girl, and a Tucson staff member who complained that a co-worker posed a threat to “several hundred female refugees.”

Most of those allegations predated this summer’s influx of children arriving because of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which led to children being separated from their parents after they illegally crossing the border.

Southwest Key houses more than 1,500 migrant children in Arizona, California and Texas under a $458 million contract with the federal Unaccompanied Alien Children Program. Thirteen of those facilities are in Arizona.

State law gives the Department of Health Services authority to inspect facilities only when there are complaints. But in light of mounting public concern and media reports, the department filed its own complaint, giving it the legal means to inspect all 13 facilities in late July through mid-August.

The biggest failings uncovered by the inspections revolved around the only background check the state can control: a Level 1 fingerprint clearance card. The card screens out anyone with a criminal background.

Shelter employees are supposed to present a valid card when they are hired. If they lack one, employees are supposed to apply for one within a week of employment.

Yet in at least nine instances, that didn’t happen.

At a Southwest Key shelter at Seventh Avenue and Buckeye Road, one employee went 20 months without a valid card, from August 2016 until April of this year. That was about the time the zero-tolerance border-enforcement policy took effect, sending kids to the shelters.

Another employee at that facility south of downtown Phoenix worked eight months this year without the required clearance, according to the inspection findings.

At Southwest Key’s facility in Tucson, there were eight instances of missing fingerprint clearance cards, and the employees were without them for as little as two weeks or as much as eight months.

The Mesa facility where a worker was accused of abusing eight boys was fined $1,000 for failing to complete fingerprint checks on staff. However, that worker had a valid fingerprint-clearance card, Christ said.

Christ said the findings have been forwarded for enforcement, which typically carries a $500 fine.

Eller said it’s unlikely Southwest Key would dispute any of the findings, and noted that while the state’s backgrounding is limited to the fingerprint clearance card, Southwest Key does a more extensive background check.

Aside from the fingerprint cards, the biggest deficiencies the Department of Health Services inspectors found involved privacy concerns.

Numerous facilities lacked doors on bedrooms or curtains to cover windows in those doors.

In other cases, inspectors found the shelters had too many beds in one room. State regulations require at least 60 square feet of floor space for each child.

In some cases, the facility told the Department of Health Services it was correcting the problem by adding curtains or moving beds to a larger room.

The department said it expects the facilities to fix the problems “within reason.”

For the next 12 months, some things will be different in how the Department of Health Services regulates Southwest Key.

Along with unannounced inspections and the fingerprint-card audit, Southwest Key agreed to increase its reporting on any event that might present “a risk of substantial or serious harm” to children in its facilities.

It also will report more regularly on what it is doing to fix problems identified by inspectors.

The agreement is voluntary and will lapse after a year, Christ said, although it can be renewed.

She added that any other moves to more tightly regulate the shelters would require a new law. She added she couldn’t think of any legislation that would be needed based on the inspection results.

The inspections and other requirements pertain only to Southwest Key.

Another non-profit, A New Leaf, also provides shelter services to unaccompanied minors, but the Department of Health Services said it received only one complaint about that operation, and its inspection showed there was not the overcrowding alleged in the complaint.

Eller said Southwest Key welcomes the new requirements.

The inspections didn’t uncover anything that would suggest Southwest Key needs to significantly change the way it operates, he said, adding, “In the aggregate, the quality of care we provide is pretty good.”

In all the furor in recent months over the shelters, one fact got lost, Eller said.

“All of the issues that surfaced, we reported it,” Eller said. “No third party came in and said, ‘There’s a systemic problem here.’ We called the ball on all of those (abuse allegations).”

In response to the allegations in recent months, Southwest Key has pointed to the following safeguards at its shelters:

❚ Children are told upon arrival that they have a right to not be abused.

❚ They can access a phone at any time to report abuse to local police, the Arizona Department of Child Safety, or the federal Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.

❚ Employees accused of sexual misconduct are immediately suspended and reported to law enforcement.

❚ Investigations are typically initiated when shelter staff reports abuse allegations to state and federal authorities.