Budget cuts eliminate background checks

(myfoxboston) - The state is putting some of its most vulnerable citizens at risk of abuse by the people hired to care for them, FOX Undercover’s Mike Beaudet reports.

Read Mike's Blog

The Disabled Persons Protection Commission recently stopped allowing employers to tap into its database of complaints to do background checks on the people they want to hire to work with the disabled.

Advocates for the disabled say the move, effective April 1, is especially dangerous because reports of abuse are on the rise.

“It is a much more dangerous place to be today without those background checks than it was March 31st,” said David Hart, president of Coalition of Families and Advocates.

Hart says the background checks are critical because most allegations of abuse against the disabled do not result in criminal charges, so they won’t be picked up on a criminal background check.

“People that have developmental disabilities, 90 percent of them will be abused or neglected in their lifetime,” Hart said. “Removing the background checks, I think you’re opening up to even more possibilities of abuse and neglect.”

To one woman who saw first hand what abuse can do to a disabled loved one, the cuts are devastating.

“Oh, it makes me sick,” said Gloria Medeiros, who says her daughter Christine was abused at a group home by controlling and manipulative staff members.

Medeiros filed complaints with the DPPC. No criminal charges were ever filed, so based on the mandatory criminal background checks, or CORI checks, the staffers would have a clean record.

But the DPPC’s background check would reveal her complaints against the staffers. That’s information that Medeiros said employers should be able to access.

“They’re they ones who are hiring these people to watch over our kids,” she said.

In 2008, employers requested 15,000 background checks from the DPPC, which resulted in the discovery of more than 300 people about to be hired with allegations of abuse or neglect against them, according to DPPC executive director Nancy Alterio

“We’re preparing for a cut in fiscal year 2010. We’re trying to be proactive instead of reactive,” said Alterio.

Still, Alterio believes abuse has been prevented because of these checks.

“I do,” she said.”

Alterior called her decision a difficult one, but says her agency is already stretched thin with reports of abuse increasing and a backlog of more than 600 overdue investigations.

“I am concerned that by not providing this service to employers that we are, that there’s potentially people that are going to be working with disabilities that should not be working with persons with disabilities,” she said.

State Inspector General Gregory Sullivan released a report in Feb. 2005 criticizing the hiring practices of all health and human service agencies in the state, including the Department of Mental Retardation.

“I think that a human services vendor really has a right to know whether or not there are complaints of abuse or neglect against a prospective employee,” Sullivan said.

Three DPPC staff members worked part-time on background checks at a cost of $60,000 a year.

“That's a big big price to pay pulling the plug on our safety net against abuse and neglect for a very small amount of money,” Sullivan said.

Gov. Deval Patrick says there’s no way to avoid painful budget cuts, but this is one decision even he’s questioning.

“I don't think it makes sense and I think that's a decision that was made in that agency and they ought to reconsider it,” Patrick told FOX Undercover.

“Their budget even after the cut is larger, is higher since I've been in office than it was before I was in office. And like every other agency they are going to figure out how to do what needs to be done within limited resources. And we're here to help them do that,” Patrick said.

The DPPC is applying for a federal grant that would allow it to restore the background checks. But until that money comes through or another solution is found, employers cannot do these background checks on the people they're hiring to work with the disabled.