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Loading...Careworker Arrested For Selling Drugs At Work
More Trouble at Woods Services Facility Where Bryan Nevins Died
It was already beyond outrageous to hear about how 20-year-old Bryan Nevins, who was severely autistic and non-verbal, died after being left in a locked minivan on the grounds of Woods Services in Langhorne, PA, on July 24th. Felony charges have been filed against Stacey J. Strauss of Philadephia for ‘neglect of a care-dependent person, involuntary manslaughter and recklessly endangering another person.’ And the state of Pennsylvania has revoked the license for Woods Services and banned it from admitting new residents.
This is all terrible and shocking. Imagine if you were the parent or relative of someone who is a resident at Woods Services and is still there, because there are simply no other alternatives?
But it gets worse.
Another Woods Service Employee Arrested on Drug Charges
Last Friday, August 6th, another Woods Services counselor, Uron Brinson of Trenton, NJ, was arrested for on drug charges. As reported in the Lebanon Daily News, Brinson was caught after selling $5,000 worth of cocaine in the parking lot of Woods Services to a police informant on Friday. On July 26th, he had been caught selling $1,120 in cocaine, also in the parking lot of the facility.
Needless to say, these two arrests of Woods Services employees—-of individuals whose job is to oversee the care and life of individuals with disabilities, some of whom may be non-verbal—-are extremely troubling.
Who Is Taking Care of Persons With Disabilities? Is Anyone?
I closed my post about Bryan Nevins’ tragic death by citing the huge need for staff ‘who have adequate and sufficient training and who understand about autism and disabilities.’ I also wrote that
Woods Services is Langhorne is described as a ‘”safe” place to live with “close supervision” ‘— Bryan Nevins’ death, and how he died, suggests quite the opposite.
The recent arrest of another Woods Services worker for peddling drugs can only lead one to wonder, what are any of the facility’s workers doing or rather not doing? Is anyone supervising the staff and noticing what’s going on? Or is someone supposedly doing this but ‘looking the other way’?
Was Bryan Nevins being left in the locked minivan on a boiling hot summer day not the exception but something that has happened too often?
And at how many other facilities where individuals with disabilities reside are there similar, if not worse, issues with staffing?
Read more: health policy
Photo by Jake Sutton.
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It is black and white. If you are illegal you should be deported. Victim or Prep. Obey the law and…
i don't blame it!! poor thing just wants to live it's own way :-(
Very good Australians... :) Now it is our turn.
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+ add your ownPlease visit our Facebook page created in response to the incidents at Woods. It is called "Out of the Woods". We encourage those who have witnessed what goes on behind closed doors of institutional settings to share your stories. http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Out-of-the-Woods/115838481800336?ref=ts
Four years ago I had MAJOR surgery. I was single so the doctors arranged for me to be put in a nursing home until I was strong enough to be on my own. No specific time frame just until I was well enough to function. For the first month I was essentially bedridden then halfway through the next month I was well enough to walk around. That is when I started to notice items in the nursing home that weren't "Kosher". My surgery area the bandage was supposed to be changed daily, it was not even though I did ask. The only answer I could get out of the nurse was that they did not have the correct bandages.
This went on for over a month. Then the next event was in the AM the nurses came around and checked everyone's temperature. This was fine until about two weeks into it they rand out of plastic covers for the temperature probe and they just didn't bother to clean the probe off between peoples' temperature. The guy that shared my room has some sort of communicable disease in his mouth.
There were other incidences that I will not go into here other than to say they expected each person to give them a personal history. When I did they became very quiet and started the amateur psychologists and trying to "cure" me.
Needless to say I was getting well enough to complain to the nursing supervisor, she just ignored me.
When I got out of the place I wrote a 3 page letter of complaint to the state nursing board (I never got an answer BTW).
About a year later I found out that the nursin
That is pretty awful, thank you for the information.
Geez Louise... I've worked in mental hospitals for many years. The inpatients I've worked with are often quite bright and functional but for a few, ah, significant quirks; i.e., THEY USUALLY NOTICE when the care is insufficient or inappropriate! And still, let me tell you, the care is QUITE OFTEN BOTH and nothing ever really gets done about it. Why? Because patients are loath to complain, & because the credibility of psych pts is very low due to all the paranoids, the psychotics and the somatics among them. Staff routinely suffers from "habituation to stimulus" -- more boredom than burnout. They're often only "warm bodies" sent from agencies to meet staffing quotas; they know or care nothing about the pts and often barely speak English! Staff routinely chart on pts assigned to them that they've never even spoken with during the entire shift! And this is at the "QUALITY" places, like major metropolitan hospitals. Oh, I could write a book on the things I've seen. I hate to even imagine how things are in facilities that serve DD, head-injured, etc., long-term patients who present even less challenge or interesting-ness (for lack of a better word) and pose little risk of "ratting staff out" or complaining to an ombudsman. Truly, you would NOT BELIEVE what I've seen in the public sector mental health system. So the article isn't surprising to me at all. This kind of stuff is the "iceberg tip" of a little-known crisis in mental-health care.
Thank you for the info.
As a former caretaker at Home Life, a non profit company housing 100 + special needs clients, I will testify that drug use is common. The people in charge of the company condone and in several cases are involved in daily illegal drug use. This is just part of the industry ... at least in Oregon.
This facility should be closed with the upper administration being held accountable for not monitoring the environment. This does NOT excuse the behavior of the employees however. They also need to be held accountable. The employees who do care and perform quality work for the clients should be commended and paid a livable wage. I've worked in this field over the years and have reported neglect & abuse to upper management. Nothing was done, the guilty were still employed and I was harassed for opening my mouth. I imagine this happens a lot in care facilities. These environments attract business types seeking to make a quick buck off of the clients. They cut costs anyway they can to maximize money in their pockets. So less than desireable workers are hired at low pay with a few good workers thrown in there. The problem employees start pocketing clients' medications to sell on the street, they steal what few valuables clients' may have and ignore the needs of their charges. Meanwhile, equally under paid decent employees try to compensate and driven to silence in order to keep their jobs. Problems start with management folks because they decide who gets hired or fired and how much pay is allocated. An issue comes to their attention, they want to sweep it under the rug so management doesn't look bad or get their asses sued. The states need to step up their monitoring of these institutions and have back up facilities for when bad ones need to be closed.
It is the responsibility of those in power to protect the defenseless....
Unbelievable. This home should be thoroughly investigated.
Thanx Kristina for the info, lets pray.
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