FOCUS: TROUBLED YOUTHS
Violence at group homes prompted by "perfect storm"
On the night of May 31, a dozen youths fled from the Randolph Children’s Home, and after being brought back there, they fought with police and staff, forcing authorities to use pepper spray to quell the melee.
Eight days later, on Monday night, two residents of Avenue House in Lockport allegedly beat a 24-year-old female worker to death at the home for troubled youths—in a misguided attempt to cover up the theft of $160.
Both facilities, the Randolph Children’s Home in Cattaraugus County and Avenue House, are run by the same nonprofit agency, New Directions Youth & Family Services.
Is that just a tragic coincidence, and how much is New Directions to blame?
There is no obvious culprit here.
One professional familiar with New Directions and its facilities didn’t blast the agency, but he thinks that such violent incidents are a result of several factors putting youths and staff members at increased risk.
“You have more violent kids coming into these homes, you have counties that won’t pay for children to stay long enough for change to happen, and you have agencies like New Directions trying to deal with these kids with the resources they have at hand,” the professional said.
“It’s not all the fault of the kids, it’s not all the fault of the counties, and it’s not all the fault of New Directions. But you have a perfect storm [of risk factors].”
State Sen. Catharine M. Young, ROlean, was more critical, but she faulted the whole state system, including recent cutbacks in the state budget and the operation of the state Office of Children & Family Services, which licenses both Avenue House and the Randolph Children’s Home.
Young has called for a state investigation into that office to determine whether the two young men charged with murder had been placed appropriately in the group home.
She suspects that they were higher-level offenders.
“I’m not saying it’s necessarily the facility’s fault,” Young said. “Maybe it’s the decisions made about where these youths are placed. When these systems were put in place, lower-level [offenders] were placed there. Now we have youths with more serious issues being placed there.”
Defenders and critics alike agree on that point, that youths in such group homes are more troubled — and violent — than 10 or 20 years ago.
Gangs now use younger kids — ages 13, 14 and 15 — to earn their stripes by committing violent acts, up to and including killings. That’s a far cry from a decade or two ago, when these homes were populated by youths described as “emotionally disturbed” or merely lacking parental guidance.
“Now they have real juvenile delinquents who are gang members,” said the professional familiar with New Directions, who has worked with youths but spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You can’t do the same thing with these kids that they did with Orphan Annie 10 years ago.”
A New Directions official pointed out that it is a large agency, with two larger residential centers, Randolph Children’s Home and Wyndham Lawn, and four group homes, including Avenue House.
“It is an unusual grouping of events in such a short period of time,” said Joseph Gallagher, an administrative director for the agency. “I think if you take a look at our performance over a long period of time, you’ll see that we run a high-quality program. We don’t think these events are reflective of the quality of services we provide.”
New Directions officials are taking a close look at both situations, especially Monday night’s beating death.
“We’re looking at that under a microscope, but it’s too early,” Gallagher said. “We don’t see any obvious failure in our process or our staffing.”
New Directions officials also are studying their procedures for accepting youths at the Randolph Children’s Home, following the May 31 incident that led to the arrest of a 17-year-old resident on riot charges.
Avenue House, which has been in existence since the late 1960s, houses up to six youths, most referred from Family Court as people in need of supervision, juvenile delinquents or neglect victims. But the youths sent there generally are considered less at-risk than the youths at Wyndham Lawn or Randolph Children’s Home.
So Renee C. Greco was beaten to death in a home that’s considered a steppingstone back into the community for youths considered less at-risk.
“I think what it says is that with all the information and all the best services and supports in place, unpredictable things can still happen,” said Julie Tomasi, performance and quality-improvement director at New Directions.
Some have questioned why a 24-year-old woman was left alone at night with five troubled youths, who presumably were referred there from Family Court. Both Greco’s brother and a close friend have suggested that her working alone was a concern and that she was on the verge of quitting her job.
But Greco, who worked roughly a 2-10 p. m. shift, had been in that position for two years and was familiar with both the home and the youths living there, New Directions officials said.
“Based on our previous experience with our group homes, there had been no reason to suspect that the East Avenue home was staffed inappropriately,” Gallagher said. “To have a single worker on duty is a common situation in group homes across the state.”
After the Randolph melee and Monday night’s beating death, Young and a local union leader both were critical of the budget ax that has forced the July 1 closing of the Cattaraugus Residential Center in Limestone and the Great Valley Residential Center. Both were 25- bed nonsecure youth residential treatment centers.
“If we find that these two [murder suspects] were inappropriately placed, then the people who voted for the state budget should be held accountable,” Young said. “This shows that there are real-life consequences to the votes in Albany.”
Kevin Hintz, local coordinator for the state Public Employees Federation, wrote a letter to The Buffalo News, before Monday’s killing, linking the Randolph incident to the closing of the two state-operated youth facilities in Cattaraugus County.
“These small facilities for low-risk youth provided a full range of treatment options led by experienced staff,” Hintz wrote.
He added that the state Office of Children & Family Services’ campaign to close state-operated facilities is “likely to result in more threats to the safety of youth and our communities.”
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