This is a staff list for Excelsior Wellness Center (fka Excelsior Youth Center) in Spokane, WA
(we are working to acquire the complete records for ALL years)
We advise current and/or former staff to report any abuses you may have witnessed while working at Excelsior Wellness Center. For information on your rights and how to take action, visit www.heal-online.org/blowthewhistle.htm. If you were fired or forced to resign because you opposed any illegal and/or unethical practices at Excelsior Wellness Center, you have the right to take action.
If you were harmed (family or survivor) by Excelsior Wellness Center, please contact [email protected] if you remember the long-term employees and from which years. This will help! Also, if you recognize any of these staff as having worked at another program, please send in any information about their past or present employment at other facilities and/or cults.
Please don’t place your loved one in Excelsior Wellness Center and rescue them if they are there now.
|
Name |
Unit/Position |
Additional Information | |||||||||||||||||
| Amy Fager | Admissions/Referrals | Fager holds Counseling Agency Affiliated Registration in WA. Amy's license # is CG60172594 and you can file complaints against Fager here: http://www.doh.wa.gov/LicensesPermitsandCertificates/FileComplaintAboutProviderorFacility Fager holds no other mental health nor medical licenses in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Doris Brown | Board member | HEAL requires Brown's full name (including middle name) and/or license type and number to verify whether Brown holds any professional licenses in WA. | |||||||||||||||||
| Dennis Hession | Board member | Hession is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Richard B. White | Board member | White is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Jack Bury | Board member | Bury is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Toby Hatley | Board member | Hatley is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Rebecca Greene | Board member | Greene is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Anthony Anderman | Board member | Anderman is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Caryl Harper | Billing | HEAL does not perform staff license checks on office, maintenance, nor food service staff unless they have direct contact and authority over clients. | |||||||||||||||||
| Bryan Stanfill | Clinical Supervisor | Bryan E. Stanfill ( may be a different person) is a certified sex offender treatment provider and mental health counselor in WA. His license #s are: LH00008767 and FC00000204. You can file complaints against this provider at http://www.doh.wa.gov/LicensesPermitsandCertificates/FileComplaintAboutProviderorFacility. | |||||||||||||||||
| Marilyn Pitini | Day Services | Marilyn B. Pitini (may be a different person) is a licensed mental health counselor in WA. Pitini's license # is LH00004700. You can file complaints against this provider at http://www.doh.wa.gov/LicensesPermitsandCertificates/FileComplaintAboutProviderorFacility. | |||||||||||||||||
| Jason Druffel | Human Resources | Druffel is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Sandi Skok | Education Director | HEAL has contacted the OSPI in WA and is awaiting their response regarding whether Skok is a licensed educator in WA. | |||||||||||||||||
| Robert Faltermeyer | Executive Director/Fundraising | Faltermeyer is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Kris Warfield | Foster Care | Warfield is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Kim Pieroni | Financial Director | HEAL does not perform staff license checks on office, maintenance, nor food service staff unless they have direct contact and authority over clients. | |||||||||||||||||
| Scott Davis | Dir.of CD Svcs. | HEAL requires Davis's full name (including middle name) and/or license type and number to verify whether Davis holds any professional licenses in WA. | |||||||||||||||||
| Kathy Gormley | CD Program Mgr. | Gormley is not a licensed mental health nor medical professional in WA. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx | |||||||||||||||||
| Salley Arney | BRS Program Mgr. |
Sally A Arney may be a different person. We found no record of any Salley Arney holding any licenses in Washington. Source: https://fortress.wa.gov/doh/providercredentialsearch/SearchCriteria.aspx |
|||||||||||||||||
| Charisse Pope | BRS Program Director. | Charisse M. Pope (may be a different person) is a licensed mental health counselor in WA. Pope's license number is LH00005615. You can file complaints against this provider at http://www.doh.wa.gov/LicensesPermitsandCertificates/FileComplaintAboutProviderorFacility. | |||||||||||||||||
| Andrew Hill | CEO/President | Andrew Richardson Hill (may be a different person) is a registered recreation therapist and licensed mental health counselor in WA. His Recreation Therapist license # is RE60048743 and his Mental Health Counselor license # is LH60116271. You can file complaints about this individual here: http://www.doh.wa.gov/LicensesPermitsandCertificates/FileComplaintAboutProviderorFacility | |||||||||||||||||
| NO OTHER NAMES | NO OTHER TITLES | There is no additional information on staff at this location at this time.* | |||||||||||||||||
| *(Excelsior Youth Center, like many other programs in this industry, keeps a "tight lid" on any specific information regarding their staff, qualifications, and practices. Please contact us with the names of any staff of which you have firsthand knowledge or experience. Thank you for your help.) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Police say Excelsior Youth Center calls too often By Jody Lawrence-Turner The Spokesman-Review You're viewing a free article Print Email Close [X] Sorry, but you need to be logged in to share stories via e-mail. This helps us prevent abuse of our e-mail system. Don't have a Spokesman.com account? Create one here for free. Tags:City of SpokaneExcelsior Youth CenterSpokane Police Spokane police are complaining that a treatment center for troubled young people is calling for help too often. There have been 110 calls per month to police by the Excelsior Youth Center from September 2013 through last Sunday – a total of 1,629 calls for service, police records show. Most … Graphic by Molly Quinn (Full-size photo) Spokane police are complaining that a treatment center for troubled young people is calling for help too often. There have been 110 calls per month to police by the Excelsior Youth Center from September 2013 through last Sunday – a total of 1,629 calls for service, police records show. Most of the calls are for runaways, but there are also reports of assaults on staff members or other young people at the treatment center. “Excelsior is the largest single consumer of law enforcement resources for the Spokane Police Department,” Spokane City Attorney Nancy Isserlis wrote in a letter to the facility. The longtime director of the private nonprofit facility disputes the city’s numbers. “There’s a law that says we have to report runaways even if kids get just outside our gates,” said Bob Faltermeyer, executive director of Excelsior. “At this point, we are questioning the validity of the numbers.” Half of the 50 inpatient clients at Excelsior are being treated for mental health or behavioral issues. The others are being treated for substance abuse. The clients, who range in age from 10 to 21, aren’t there as a result of criminal behavior. Although runaway calls average 100 per month, police also are concerned about the number of assaults, including youths who punched, scratched, choked or bit staff members and clients who hurt themselves. Police are responding an average of 10 times per month on those types of calls. Faltermeyer calls physical assaults on campus “part of the nature of the business.” Excelsior’s leaders have requested police records for reports corresponding to the hundreds of calls so they can cross-reference them with their own incident reports. Those records will help determine “the legitimacy of those numbers,” Faltermeyer said. Excelsior is a nonprofit that serves about 90 clients at a time, 50 inpatient and 40 outpatient. Excelsior’s budget in 2013 was about $4.5 million – 92 percent of that is state reimbursements. The remaining 8 percent is received through donations. Faltermeyer has overseen the facility for 32 years. The executive director is cooperating with police over their concerns related to runaways and assaults, as well as criminal activity in the area possibly committed by young people from the facility. Excelsior is located on 34 acres on West Indian Trail Road. “We’ve been meeting and discussing a plan of action, and working on agreed-upon steps that are in accordance with the law as well as best practices,” said police spokeswoman Monique Cotton. Faltermeyer adds, “The dialogue we heard at first was quite confrontational. But we’ve really addressed this issue.” The letter penned by Isserlis also set off inspections from state regulatory agencies. The inspection report from the Washington Department of Health concluded that “No deficiencies were identified during the program investigation” and Excelsior wasn’t cited for deficient practices. Source: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/oct/24/police-excelsior-youth-center-calls-too-often/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Alleged child rape victim, suspect lived together at youth center By: Jeff Humphrey Posted: Dec 27, 2016 05:48 PM PST Updated: Dec 27, 2016 05:48 PM PST Alleged child rape victim, suspect... SPOKANE, Wash. - She's already lived a troubled life moving in and out of foster homes, but now a 10-year-old girl has allegedly been raped and the Spokane Police Department is investigating. Detectives say it happened after the girl ran away from the Excelsior Youth Center in the 3700 block of West Indian Trail Road. The 13-year-old rape suspect is now in custody, locked up in Juvenile Detention center. The Excelsior Youth Center trying to get troubled kids back on the right track, but the staff doesn't have any legal authority to keep their clients from walking away, even if they're just 10-years-old. Excelsior is a non-profit group home for foster kids who can no longer safely live with their parents. “A lot of these kids have troubled pasts from their home life, so they are wards of the state, they go and live there,” said Spokane Police Lieutenant Steve Wohl. Detectives say the 10-year-old girl was doing well in Excelsior's school, but on Christmas Eve she sneaked away with a friend. The pair went to a nearby vacant home and spent the night. A 13-year-old Excelsior boy showed up and that's when the sexual assaults allegedly happened. The victim returned to Excelsior and reported the incidents to the staff. “They're working with us, they want to do right by the kids who are staying there and by the citizens, so as soon as they found out these kids had run away and a crime had occurred, they immediately called police,” said Lt. Wohl. The child was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Sexual assault kits were completed and the 13-year-old arrested. Police say a young girl who had already lived a troubled life has been victimized again. “She's a 10-year-old girl, I mean, just a baby, and so now she unfortunately has had this horrendous thing happen to her, that will follow her,” said Lt. Wohl. “And so these are the cases that really affect the detectives that work here in my unit and it's something that's going to affect her as well and it's sad situation all around.” Officials at Excelsior say state law specificity prohibits the staff there from forcibly detaining their clients, or even following them, if they walk away from the facility. In this case, Excelsior did report the 10-year-old as a runaway as soon as the staff realized she was missing. They are also working with the police department to get a speedier response from patrol officers when the runaways are especially young or suffering from acute mental illness. The young suspect at the detention center is now facing two child rape charges and will not be returning to the group home. Source: http://www.kxly.com/news/local-news/alleged-child-rape-victim-suspect-lived-together-at-youth-center/235260748 | |||||||||||||||||||
|
Despite changes, Excelsior pursues mandate to help troubled youth
Sun., Aug. 27, 2017
E (Dan Pelle / The Spokesman-Review) By
Chad Sokol
[email protected](509)
459-5047
Twitter
Facebook
Email
Reddit SMS Carson fled in the middle of the night,
bringing only her phone, charger, earphones and a hooded sweatshirt, which she
stuffed into a backpack. After she slipped out the door of Excelsior Youth
Center, a staff member caught up to her in the courtyard, pleading. If you
run, the staff member told the 17-year-old, the center will have to alert
police. “I said, ‘Watch me,’ and I ran across the street,” Carson said in a
recent interview. “Out of sight.” That night, about a month ago, she met up
with her boyfriend and some other teens and got high by swallowing eight tabs
of cough-and-cold medicine. “Triple Cs,” she called them. “The little red
pills.” Runaways are a routine challenge for Excelsior, a nonprofit facility
in Spokane’s Indian Trail neighborhood that contracts with the state
to provide foster care as well as outpatient treatment for mental
health and substance abuse. Excelsior houses some of Washington’s most
vulnerable children and teens, often ones that no other facility will accept
because of their behavioral issues. But under state law, the doors
must remain unlocked. Excelsior staff are powerless to stop kids from running
away. “We are not able to put our hands on them and drag them back to
their program,” said Connie Lambert-Eckel, the director of field operations
for the state Children’s Administration, a division of the Department of
Social and Health Services. Doing so, she said, would infringe on their
“constitutional right to freedom.” Excelsior’s role in the lives of
foster kids, and its location in a suburban neighborhood, have been cause for
controversy in recent years. Excelsior youth have been
blamed for property crimes in the area, and city officials once identified
the facility as
a top consumer of police resources. Some shocking stories have emerged,
too. In December, a 10-year-old girl left the facility and
reported being raped, twice, by a 13-year-old boy in a nearby vacant home.
And in May, five youths were arrested after
a brawl in Excelsior’s gym. Police said the kids assaulted seven staff
members and a responding police officer. Excelsior’s executive director,
Andrew Hill, does not take those incidents lightly. But he insists that the
disruptive youths are a minority of those in Excelsior’s care. And he says
some neighbors and local media outlets have failed to recognize the positive
work that happens within the facility. Lambert-Eckel agreed, noting that many
of the children who live at Excelsior are victims of abuse or neglect. Some
simply won’t trust their caretakers or accept treatment. Volatile behavior,
she said, is predictable. “You have to reflect on what you’re asking this
program to do,” she said. “It’s not like kids walk through the door and
suddenly everything goes away, all the issues and the cumulative trauma that
they’ve experienced just dissolves. “It’s not easy,” she continued. “It’s not
a light switch. There is no magic wand. It is just hard, persistent, dedicated
work.” A changing model Excelsior is one of only three facilities in the state
that offer the highest level of care for foster kids – what the state calls
behavioral rehabilitative services or BRS. The other facility-based BRS
providers are Ryther and Navos, both in the Seattle area. “They tend to
represent what we consider the most restrictive placement environment,”
Lambert-Eckel said. “This program is very structured. There’s a high staffing
ratio. There’s a lot of structure to the day. There are a lot of expectations
of young people to keep their behavior well supported.” Nearly 1,000 youths
are placed with BRS providers each year, but the wait for an available bed can
stretch up to two months, according to a 2016 report by DSHS. And state
funding for such programs has become scarce since a round of budget cuts in
2010. “Many BRS placement providers stepped up their efforts to meet the
placement need, but the combination of low rates, children with increasingly
severe behavioral and mental health challenges, and mixed messages from (the
Children’s Administration) resulted in a loss of confidence in CA by
providers,” the report states. Excelsior recently decided to scale down its
residential child welfare and substance abuse programs and expand its
outpatient programs. Hill said Excelsior would provide more “brief
interventions” in which the center would house kids for up to 72 hours while
working to stabilize their home environments. Excelsior also is preparing to
build a new 16-bed unit for older teens who are “aging out” of the foster care
system.
Early last year, the center had about 100 clients ages 10 to 21. About
half were residents of the facility, and the other half attended the center
for outpatient services. Today the center serves more than 210 clients, but
only about two dozen are residents. Chief program officer Ryan Kiely said
Excelsior has more than tripled its annual operating budget over the past four
years. It’s now more than $10 million, a combination of state and regional
grants and contract funding. Kiely said he’s proud of the “continuum of care”
that Excelsior offers. In addition to its growing outpatient programs, the
center offers its own accredited middle and high school courses in conjunction
with Spokane Public Schools. “We have much more robust services than what’s
required,” Kiely said. But he expressed concern that reducing the number of
BRS beds would lead to more kids being sent out of state or living in hotel
rooms with their social workers while waiting for beds to open up. “My concern
is about the system at large,” he said. DSHS says the whole foster care system
is strained due to budget cuts and a dwindling number of licensed foster
homes. While the changes at Excelsior may create additional challenges,
Lambert-Eckel said the center needed to make “some hard decisions.” “They
needed to look hard at kids with known run histories, and they needed to look
hard at how they can best manage the population that’s placed there,” she
said. “I respect those decisions. I understand them. I certainly, on the flip
side of that coin, would really love to have the capacity back, because we
certainly have the need.” When the melee in the gym and the alleged rape made
headlines, Hill said he worried not only about how Excelsior’s youth were
stigmatized, but also about their safety. “I’m not making this up,” he said.
“As soon as these articles around Excelsior started to hit the news, we had
people knocking on the doors saying they were Jimmy’s uncle, Jimmy’s grandpa.
We had freaky people showing up here because the vulnerable kids are here. We
had people parked down the street waiting for kids to run. We had girls
solicited as they ran away. We had homeless people on our property.” A debate
over group homes The average youth in Excelsior’s residential child welfare
program bounced between 14 different homes before arriving at the center. Such
instability only exacerbates the trauma that many of those kids live with.
Child welfare experts agree the best place for a child is a parent’s or
relative’s home – as long as there are appropriate support systems in place.
“Just like everybody in the system, we want to see kids and families or foster
families in the least restrictive place possible and the most opportunities
for success,” Kiely said. More than 46 percent of kids who enter the state’s
care are placed with family members, “which is an extraordinarily successful
outcome,” Lambert-Eckel said. Washington, she said, “is among the most
successful states in that regard.” Michelle Ressa, a Spokane County court
commissioner who presides over child custody cases, said she believes the
system is moving in the right direction, but she’s not convinced that group
homes, such as Excelsior, provide a helpful, therapeutic environment. “They
don’t go into group homes without problems, that’s for sure. But sometimes
those problems are exacerbated in the group home,” Ressa said. “I
unfortunately have seen too many kids start their offender history in group
homes.” Some in the juvenile justice system contend that group homes encourage
criminal behavior. In April,
the Inlander reported that 44 different Excelsior kids had been sent to
Spokane County juvenile detention during the previous 12 months, and public
defenders said many of those charges stemmed from the kids’ time in the
facility. According to DSHS, one out of three youths spend time in juvenile
detention while placed at residential treatment facilities. Ressa cautioned
that she can’t derive a cause-and-effect relationship between group homes and
criminal behavior. “But that’s where it starts,” she said. “We’re congregating
our highest-needs kids with the most issues together, and they learn from each
other.” Group homes are required to call law enforcement when youths run away,
and nearly half of those in BRS placements do run at some point, according to
DSHS. Hill said about 80 percent of Excelsior’s runaways come back within 24
hours. Ressa suggested group home employees also are more likely than parents
to call police when youth act out. “It’s unlikely that if you throw food at
the house that your mom is going to call the police, or your dad,” she said.
“Kids who are part of the foster care system … come into the juvenile justice
system differently.” Kiely said it’s extremely difficult to place some of
Excelsior’s kids with their families. “There are some kids that have families
that are trying to reunify at this point,” he said. “But at this high-end
level of service, we do see less of that.” During a recent interview at
Excelsior, a 13-year-old girl named Jasmine said she hoped to reunite with her
mother, even though she had beaten her and forced her to eat dish soap. “I
love her because she’s my mother,” Jasmine said. A boy named Evan said he had
lived at Excelsior for more than two years and was waiting for his mother to
secure an apartment, but he wasn’t getting his hopes up. A third teen living
at Excelsior said he had twice been sent to live far away from his home state,
in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Hill said group homes are a reasonable option for
housing kids with no other place to go in the crowded system. He said the
health care and criminal justice systems need to be reformed in conjunction
with foster care. “Why is that person in a state hospital? Why is that person
homeless? Why is that person in jail?” he asked. “It’s because our system
responds to the needs of people with punitive, reactionary ways to solve the
problem, instead of looking at the person and saying, ‘What are their needs?’
” The road back Carson has lived at Excelsior for a little more than a year.
Unlike most of the youths who live there, it’s the first foster placement she
remembers. The only other time she was in foster care, she was an infant, she
said. Carson said her mother abandoned her at a young age and she was raised
by her grandmother, Alice Lemley, on the South Hill. But several years ago,
Carson said, her mother returned and demanded custody. “Emotionally she was
really damaged,” Lemley said of her granddaughter. “From the very beginning,
she did not want to be there (with her mother). She would call me at school
during lunch and say, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ ” As the custody battle
unfolded in Kalispel tribal court, Carson said she became depressed and
started cutting herself in the seventh grade. Over the years, she ran away
several times, got into drugs and alcohol, had some run-ins with law
enforcement and was committed to the psych ward at Providence Sacred Heart
Medical Center. Her father drank and gambled and was absent for a time, too.
Carson didn’t run from Excelsior until that night about a month ago. She
finally did it because some other youths were spreading lies about her and she
was angry, she said. She has run away twice since then. But now, she said, she
is ready to get back on track. She’s working part-time at a pizza restaurant
and plans to go back to high school. She wants to don a cap and gown like some
of her cousins did recently. Given the circumstances, Carson’s grandmother
said Excelsior has been a good fit for her. “I can’t say enough good things
about Excelsior,” Lemley said. Source:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/aug/27/despite-changes-excelsior-pursues-mandate-to-help-/#/0 HEAL NOTE: HEAL does not believe Excelsior is a good program or a safe environment for youth. We have shared the above article in order to show that DSHS in WA has affirmed that youth have civil rights and it is illegal to forcibly and physically confine them in any facility without due process and a court order. We have made bold the section we find of most interest in the article above and would advise parents that you do not have the right to subject your child to a private prison. The program industry (i.e. Excelsior) will ask you to sign liability waivers and indemnify them for any and all harm. They also often include an affidavit parents must sign claiming they have the legal right to lock up their child in a private prison without a court order. Of course, they word it slightly differently. But, that's the gist. So, when and if a youth prosecutes or sues for false imprisonment and kidnapping, the parents are found liable in court because they assured the program (ignorantly) that they had the right to imprison their child without a court order. This is true in both lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. (See David Taylor lawsuit through the preceding link and also see www.heal-online.org/legalarguments.htm) |
|||||||||||||||||||
| 5 arrested after officer, 7 staff members assaulted in melee at Excelsior Youth Center in Spokane UPDATED: Tue., May 16, 2017 × 1 / 3 Show captions Showing image 1 of 3 Twitter Facebook Email Reddit SMS By Jonathan Glover [email protected] When neighbors Kelly Busse and Mark Anderson heard there was a melee Monday night at the Excelsior Youth Center, they weren’t surprised. “There’s not much about Excelsior we don’t hear about,” said Busse, a retired Spokane police officer of 25 years. He said this month alone, he and other neighbors have heard about a break-in at a local convenience store carried out by two of Excelsior’s clients and have seen a handful of runaways walking down the street. But this particular incident was different, he said. About 8 p.m. Monday, police were called to the facility for a report of a fight. When they arrived, they found about 15 people fighting among 50 gathered in the gym and the fire alarm blaring, according to a police news release. The teens in the crowd apparently were hostile to police and interfered with officers as they attempted to break up the fights. They assaulted seven staff members and a police officer, and two other officers reported suffering minor injuries while making arrests, police said. Altogether, five of the youths were arrested and accused of multiple crimes, including third-degree assault of an officer and rioting. About a dozen officers arrived at the facility to control the crowd and end the fighting. “Being neighbors, I’m not surprised,” Anderson said. He and Busse are vocal critics of the youth center, which was deemed “the largest single consumer of law enforcement resources for the Spokane Police Department” in 2014 by then-City Attorney Nancy Isserlis. Each month, it draws roughly 110 calls for service, surpassing the next highest – NorthTown Mall – by about 2,000 calls for the 24-month period that ended in December. Busse, who remembers getting called to the center “quite often” while he was a patrol officer, is sympathetic to the center, the largest youth facility in Eastern Washington. But he has maintained for years that the problems the center faces are avoidable – a viewpoint he garnered from his time spent in group homes growing up. “They have a level of chaos they have to control all of the time,” he said of Excelsior. “But I’m not really comfortable with any part of their program.” From his time interacting with staff in the past, he said they’re “badly trained and poorly understood what they needed to do.” “A lot of the time they would just physically restrain kids, and put them in timeout,” he said. “Then they would turn around and try to file charges on the kids for assault. It was a vicious cycle.” Excelsior CEO Andrew Hill has said in the past that controlling the center’s clients isn’t as simple as most people think. Because they are juveniles, the center can’t just lock them up – it’s not a prison or a hospital. Hill did not return multiple calls seeking comment Tuesday. But Busse, who spent time in group homes while growing up, including the Hutton Settlement, is aware they can’t simply lock their doors. He said it should be possible to at least provide some level of added security so kids don’t run away. “I would beef up the external perimeter, and would make it so running away is more difficult,” he said. “Right now, all they have to do is walk out the back door, because nobody can or will stop them. Then they become a police problem because they’re a runaway.” Anderson agreed, citing a May 1 incident at his house in which a kid showed up on his doorstep in the pouring rain late at night. “It was cold and wet and he was lost,” he said. Anderson called the center to report he had found a runaway, then gave the kid directions on how to get back. Forty minutes later, he said, he called back and asked if the juvenile made it back OK. “All they could tell me is they could neither confirm nor deny the boy in question made it back,” he said. “They don’t even want to cooperate to try and be helpful.” Anderson and Busse also are active in fighting a new 22,000-square-foot, 16-bed youth transition facility that Excelsior will soon build on its campus. The two recently testified in a hearing examiner meeting, which granted approval for Excelsior to proceed with the project. In his decision, Spokane Hearing Examiner Brian McGinn made note of the residents’ concerns, but he concluded there was a lack of evidence linking Excelsior’s clients to crimes in the area, noting that even if they were behind them, it wasn’t the fault of the center. “They can’t even handle what they have now, and they want to add more?” Anderson said. “At this point, I don’t even know what else can be done. If there’s something more we could do or say, we would say it.” Source: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/may/16/5-arrested-after-numerous-officers-supervisors-ass/ | |||||||||||||||||||
Return to www.heal-online.org/thelist.htm or top of page