Prize fighting at group home

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From fight clubs to sexual assault,complaints against group home provider show problems in industry serving the state's most vulnerable residents.

At a Springfield Massachusetts group home staff encouraged residents to fight each other and awarded prizes including money,cigarettes,marijuana and alchohol,according to reports made to the state in 2011.

According to one account substantiated by the states disabled persons protection commission,a victim was hit so hard by a housemate during an arranged fight that his tooth was knocked out.Staff would pull the shades down and cheer,and may have recorded video of some fights.

Records show 279 complaints made against Guidewire group homes between 2013 and 2019.

masslive.com

How did the sexual assault charges come into play? Were they filming porn in addition to the rights?

There was a rape at a Guidewire group home,it's toward the end of the masslive.com article see the full article on masslive.com

I read most of the article and it said there was a stabbing at some point. How did they manage to miss immediate action after that?

At least the rape got prosecuted,I would have no idea how the group homes got away with so much.
Things were also bad in the old state hospital system before people were moved to private run group homes.Not enough government supervision I guess.Things still aren't as bad as the old state hospital system.

I am curious about whether or not a menu of insurance related charges may come of this type of situation, both in terms of health insurance and life insurance. I am for some reason wondering if they bought life insurance policies on residents before handing out weapons to watch them go at it or something.

At least the rape got prosecuted,I would have no idea how the group homes got away with so much.
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People in group homes are not considered competent to accurately describe what happens. Some people's disability includes inability to say when something happened, even whether it was today, yesterday, or years and years ago.
Some don't have the ability to describe what happened and may interpret a sexual assault as "s/he loves me." Etc.

So, when police or adult protective get involved, it is difficult to "prove" what happened.

This is complicated by people who have learned that accusing someone of abuse or even of stealing or destruction of property results in desired attention, or even parents who will come in and berate staff because they unconditionally believe their adult child, in spite of years long history of such attention getting actions.

Mistakes happen in both situations. Abuse continues in places where it is actually going on. Staff get blamed for things that are not true. It is very, very tricky. I am glad do not have to make those kinds of decisions.

In my state, group home providers and other employees may not take out insurance on clients.

People in group homes are not considered competent to accurately describe what happens. Some people's disability includes inability to say when something happened, even whether it was today, yesterday, or years and years ago.
Some don't have the ability to describe what happened and may interpret a sexual assault as "s/he loves me." Etc.

So, when police or adult protective get involved, it is difficult to "prove" what happened.

This is complicated by people who have learned that accusing someone of abuse or even of stealing or destruction of property results in desired attention, or even parents who will come in and berate staff because they unconditionally believe their adult child, in spite of years long history of such attention getting actions.

Mistakes happen in both situations. Abuse continues in places where it is actually going on. Staff get blamed for things that are not true. It is very, very tricky. I am glad do not have to make those kinds of decisions.

In my state, group home providers and other employees may not take out insurance on clients. [/quote]

I understand your point that they aren't supposed to take out insurance on clients, but my point is that if they are doing other things that they aren't supposed to be doing, such as allowing clients to stab each other, what makes you think that they will do what they are supposed to be doing in terms of insurance policies?

One of the contributing factors to this situation is the recruitment and training requirements for disability workers. Here in Australia there is a national enquiry (we call it a royal commission) into abuse of the disabled across the sector. A major factor is that it is difficult to attract people to work in the disability sector and it tends to be those who have no other course of employment prospects and they probably don't really want to work with the disabled if they had a choice.

Until something is done about the above issue you will continue to have staff who are uncaring/abusive

What is the rate of pay like where you are?

This gives a rough idea based on Australian dollars
https://www.payscale.com/research/AU/Jo ... ourly_Rate

A disproportionate number of staff in this sector are recent migrants who opt for employment in aged care or disability as locals don't want to work in this sector. Apart from English language proficiency, many of these workers come from countries where the disabled are generally not valued and this is reflected in some of the stories I have read. Of course there are also locals and migrants who work in this sector who are qualified, dedicated and caring but a few bad apples who really shouldn't be there.

Sexual predators are an ongoing issue as mentioned, they seek victims who they know will not be able to testify due to cognitive deficit issues.

I think too, the pay rate is a big factor. Your site said about twenty-five AuD per hour. Here it is around seven or nine dollars an hour.

I've looked into this before....market forces apply in terms of the level of skill required to be a carer. There is a cursory certification and training process (working with children is rarely needed as groups homes have adults although criminal records are supposed to be checked). Following the minimum training carers are given responsibility to work.

I am really not sure, however, if the training equips carers to deal with mental health, physical health, developmental issues , boundaries in terms of how to deal with escalation of problems, incidents etc. etc...there is enormous amount of policy carers need to understand and I do wonder if this is all beyond many of them, particularly migrant workers.

I think as with childcare workers, carers in the aged care and disability sector are woefully remunerated but if requirements are increased e.g. a university degree then minimum salaries will be raised but governments this will make many providers unprofitable to run which means the tax payer will have to foot the bill.

From what I can speak of, in the USA, I don't even think that CPR is a government requirement here, let alone a college degree.

I don't know enough about how regulated the staffing requirements are? employers would obviously desire to have the best people available but I mentioned numerous times I see migrant recruits working in disability because their language barriers make it hard to believe they receive anything other than on the job training by the company.

I took my daughter to watch car racing and recall sitting in front of a group intellectually disabled adults and their two carers who were both (from their appearance and accents) foreign. The carers were talking to each other and I was quite shocked at the derogatory language they were using to describe their clients and how they were laughing derisively at one of them who was trying to eat while dribbling from the mouth. I wanted to intervene but really didn't want to make a scene in front of my daughter or the crowd.

I have also seen Australian carers in parks and shopping centres use derisive language with disabled clients. The clients may or may not understand, if they do they might be conditioned to accept the mistreatment.

Things sound way different between the USA and Australia. Australia sounds more about quality of care. USA is more about being the lowest bidder.