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New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., today released an audit finding that the Department of Juvenile Justice did not adequately monitor its contract with Father Flanagan’s Boys Group Home in Brooklyn.

“DJJ must do a better job of monitoring Father Flanagan’s Boys Group Home to ensure compliance with the contract, which is critically important since at-risk children are involved,” Thompson said. “DJJ cannot effectively monitor and evaluate the facility without regular site visits and without documenting its findings, observations, results and follow-up actions as required.

The Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) provides detention, aftercare, and prevention services to juveniles aged 7 through 15 in New York City. DJJ’s mission is to provide secure and non-secure detention for alleged juvenile delinquents and secure detention for alleged juvenile offenders whose cases are pending, as well as for post-adjudicated juveniles awaiting transfer to state facilities. DJJ operate three secure and 17 non-secure detention group homes located throughout the City that admit nearly 6,000 juveniles each year. DJJ provides a number of services to youth while in non-secure detention including case management, education, health, dental, and mental health services.

In 2000, DJJ entered into a contract with Father Flanagan’s for the purchase of non-secure detention group care for juveniles at 535 Bergen Street in Brooklyn, which has a 12-bed capacity. The most recent contract between DJJ and Father Flanagan’s was April 1, 2005 through March 31, 2008. DJJ indicated that the contract was extended for April 1, 2008 through June 30, 2008 at the same rate of the underlying contract. DJJ’s contract states that Father Flanagan’s would be compensated for actual expenditures not to exceed $2,775,000 for the three-year period ended February 28, 2008 ($925,000 a year).

According to the contract, Father Flanagan’s is required to provide custody, detention, basic youth care, food, clothing and shelter, transportation, education, health care, recreation, court related services, social work and case management services, social skills instruction, group sessions, and the monitoring and supervision of these services.

The audit – which is available at www.comptroller.nyc.gov – assessed whether Father Flanagan’s Boys Group Home (Father Flanagan’s) operated in accordance with the key terms of its contract with the Department of Juvenile Justice and whether DJJ adequately monitored the contract. The audit covered Fiscal Year 2007, as well as a review of audits and performance evaluations back to 2000.

Auditors found that for the most part, Father Flanagan’s ensures that educational services are provided according to state and local regulations and transports juveniles to and from court, medical and dental appointments and recreational events. Further, Father Flanagan’s examines all new employee backgrounds prior to their hiring and monitors current employees annually, and operating expenditures paid for with DJJ funds appeared to be reasonable, were supported by invoices and were always within the contract budget.

However, auditors found some areas where Father Flanagan’s was not in compliance with the contract, including that Father Flanagan’s did not ensure that all of its employees had valid driver’s licenses and logbooks were incomplete and lacked reporting of all incidents that occurred at the facility.

Auditors also found that DJJ did not adequately monitor its contract with Father Flanagan’s Bergen Street facility. Among the findings:

• DJJ has not conducted performance evaluations of the contract on an annual basis as required and which should be used as the basis to evaluate whether a contract should be renewed.

• DJJ does not adequately monitor the activities of the Bergen Street facility through regular site visits, generally does not document the results of visits that are conducted, and does not have evidence of any follow-up or communications with the facility that result from the visits. A schedule of site visits provided by DJJ was not detailed and only noted date, time (not always recorded) and individual performing the visit, and lacked any details in the comments sections.

• According to the contract, DJJ is to contract an external accounting firm to audit Father Flanagan’s each contract year. However, only two independent annual audit reports have been conducted since Father Flanagan’s was awarded the contract in 2000. DJJ later produced other external audit reports for Fiscal Years 2002 through 2004. Further, DJJ indicated that no internal review or audit had been performed and that it only conducts internal reviews and audits if a problem is noted.

• The facility’s logbooks were incomplete and were not always filled out in accordance with DJJ’s policies. Although bed checks are to be recorded every 30 minutes, logbooks recorded bed checks every hour. Also, DJJ provided a report of 40 incidents that occurred at the facility during the audit period, yet only 7 of those incidents were recorded in the facility logbook and only 15 were recorded in the incident report logbook.

• DJJ did not ensure that Father Flanagan’s monitored employee driver’s licenses for validity, exposing DJJ and the facility to potential lawsuits and liabilities. Driver’s licenses are a prerequisite to employment with the facility because each youth care worker is required to drive the residents to and from their daily appointments. Auditors found that four youth care workers had out-of-state driver’s licenses and another worker had a suspended driver’s license.

• Lastly, DJJ did not have case management reports, minutes of Facility Director meetings, facility census reports, or school progress reports, all of which are to be used by DJJ to monitor Father Flanagan’s compliance with the contract.

Thompson made 10 recommendations, including that DJJ should:

• Ensure that it conducts annual performance evaluations for all contractors and should conduct a current performance evaluation prior to the renewal of the Bergen Street facility contract to determine whether it should be renewed.

• Create a formal monitoring system whereby it performs routine site visits to the Bergen Street facility to ensure compliance with the contract and, if necessary, perform follow-up visits.

• Ensure that timely annual external audits of the financial and operational activities, as well as periodic internal audits are conducted of the Bergen Street facility.

• Ensure that it periodically reviews the Bergen Street facility’s logbooks, along with any accompanying backup documents, and that logbooks are completed and up to date. It should also ensure that evidence of its own review is documented.

• Ensure that Father Flanagan’s is reviewing and monitoring its employees’ driver’s licenses to ensure that they are valid and that the employees are qualified to drive.

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