PRESS RELEASE - WESTERN NEBRASKA FAMILY SUPPORT TOWNHALL MEETING IN NORTH PLATTE THIS SATURDAY
*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ***
CONTACT:
Melanie Williams-Smotherman
Executive Director
Family Advocacy Movement
PO Box 540733
Omaha, NE 68154
402.689.9613
familyadvocacymovement.com
melanie@familyadvocacymovement.com
WESTERN NEBRASKANS ARE CALLING FOR DHHS OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
The Family Advocacy Movement (FAM) has heard the stories of many concerned families from all over Nebraska during the past two years; however, the calls and emails have increased significantly from Western Nebraska, ever since a series of exposé articles were published in the North Platte Telegraph a couple of weeks ago. Those articles shined a harsh light on the problems with the Department of Health & Human Services, and particularly with regard to Child & Family Services - which includes Child Protective Services (CPS).
"We've been inundated with calls and emails from parents and grandparents sharing common stories of deception, corruption, system abuses, and unaccountable behaviors by child welfare officials in Western Nebraska, who - according to the families - have seriously harmed them and their children," said Melanie Williams-Smotherman, executive director of FAM.
Williams-Smotherman said she is a parent whose own children suffered because of the same sorts of experiences she has been hearing and reading about from others. "Only our story pales in comparison to so many others. My husband have often said, 'We are educated, professional, and highly functional people who are active civic leaders and volunteers in our community. If this can happen to us, what must be happening to people who are more vulnerable because of less education, poverty, and with access to fewer resources?'"
"This is why we're so committed to helping families raise their voices with others and find justice for their own cases. We feel it's our responsibility as families who have been through this to reach out to others and to bring attention to the most egregious and obvious system problems," she said.
Because of the growing number of contacts from Western Nebraska recently, FAM - which is based in Omaha - plans to increase its presence and opportunities for families to come together in North Platte and other Western Nebraska cities and towns.
The group visited North Platte several months ago to hear approximately twenty consumers tell of serious problems with Region 2, as well as with the prison system not keeping inmates safe, of the the police behaving as though the area was "The Wild, Wild West," of people suffering mental health conditions and are kept from the therapists and treatment homes of their choice, and even of a veteran fighting for his needed benefits against what he says is retaliation by Region 2 officials for his speaking out against system abuses and incompetence.
"We even heard about a forced medicating of a woman. According to her husband and therapist, Michelle Myles was forced to take medication that she knew was not healthy for her to take, if she wanted to keep her state services," Williams-Smotherman said. "Her death was labeled 'heart attack,' but her husband and therapist believe a thorough enough investigation did not take place, because Region 2 officials may have been covering up for their negligence and culpability. It's simply heartbreaking, and some may say criminal."
But Williams-Smotherman said the state and its employees cannot keep stories of injustice and harm silenced forever. When people are unnecessarily hurt or unjustly treated, these issues do not just go away. That is why families and advocates are calling for major changes and safeguards that include greater transparency, oversight and accountability.
"Families want to see people held accountable for abuses of power that harm citizens. Right now, that is not happening, which is why we continue to hear about these horrific situations," she said.
"And that is why we are hosting an open family support meeting to be held this Saturday in North Platte."
Here are the details:
WHAT: TOWN HALL MEETING FOR FAMILIES, ADVOCATES, AND THOSE INTERESTED IN REFORM EFFORTS
WHEN: SATURDAY, MARCH 5th / 1:30 to 4:30 pm
WHERE: NORTH PLATTE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, 502 S. DEWEY STREET, NORTH PLATTE
(Northwest corner of Dewey and "E" Streets). Enter the door on the north side of the building ("E" Street side).
We especially encourage the attendance and participation of parents, grandparents, family advocates and professionals who are concerned about the current state of the child protection/child welfare system and have personal stories or experiences to share. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to bring brief summaries of their observations or experiences to share with others at the meeting. We will also offer information about opportunities to join with other families and reform advocates working to change this destructive system.
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Judge allows foster care lawsuit against Mass. - BostonHerald.com
Judge allows foster care lawsuit against Mass. - BostonHerald.com
BOSTON - A federal judge has ruled that a class action lawsuit against Massachusetts alleging the abuse and neglect of thousands of children in state care can proceed.
BOSTON - A federal judge has ruled that a class action lawsuit against Massachusetts alleging the abuse and neglect of thousands of children in state care can proceed.
National Whistleblowers Center - The Whistleblower's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What's Right and Protecting Yourself
National Whistleblowers Center - The Whistleblower's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What's Right and Protecting Yourself
ORDER NOW FROM THE NWC STORE
By Stephen Martin Kohn Executive
Director National Whistleblowers Center
Official Release Date: March 1, 2011
Lyons Press ($16.95)
Every single day, American workers by the thousands report fraud, violations of environmental rules, health and safety hazards, and political corruption. The National Business Ethics Survey reports that 56% of workers admit to witnessing serious misconduct at work, and more than half of them take the first step to report it. But there exists a maze of confusing state and federal laws that govern whistleblowing. Ignorance of the proper steps to expose wrongdoing too often leads to silence, lost court cases, public embarrassment, and a failure to effect real change. But when done right, whistleblowing has strengthened democracy, protected the environment, and saved taxpayers and investors billions of dollars. Modern whistleblower laws have created a powerful tool for effective grassroots participation.
Now, from the nation's leading whistleblower attorney, comes the first-ever consumer guide to whistleblowing. In The Whistleblower's Handbook, Stephen Martin Kohn explains nearly all federal and state laws regarding whistleblowing and set forth twenty-one basic rules every potential whistleblower needs to know.
ORDER NOW FROM THE NWC STORE
By Stephen Martin Kohn Executive
Director National Whistleblowers Center
Official Release Date: March 1, 2011
Lyons Press ($16.95)
Every single day, American workers by the thousands report fraud, violations of environmental rules, health and safety hazards, and political corruption. The National Business Ethics Survey reports that 56% of workers admit to witnessing serious misconduct at work, and more than half of them take the first step to report it. But there exists a maze of confusing state and federal laws that govern whistleblowing. Ignorance of the proper steps to expose wrongdoing too often leads to silence, lost court cases, public embarrassment, and a failure to effect real change. But when done right, whistleblowing has strengthened democracy, protected the environment, and saved taxpayers and investors billions of dollars. Modern whistleblower laws have created a powerful tool for effective grassroots participation.
Now, from the nation's leading whistleblower attorney, comes the first-ever consumer guide to whistleblowing. In The Whistleblower's Handbook, Stephen Martin Kohn explains nearly all federal and state laws regarding whistleblowing and set forth twenty-one basic rules every potential whistleblower needs to know.
R.I. doctor makes ‘most wanted’ list
R.I. doctor makes ‘most wanted’ list | Rhode Island news | projo.com | The Providence Journal
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, March 1, 2011
By John Hill
Journal Staff Writer
A Rhode Island doctor charged with fraud, money laundering and illegally distributing controlled drugs has made the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ 10 Most Wanted list, agency officials announced.
Tarek W. Wehbe, 46, has been a fugitive since he failed to show up for a court appearance in 2008 for a 152-count indictment that accused him of billing Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies $2.9 million for drugs he never bought, office visits that never happened and treatments that were never administered.
The DHHS list, posted online at http://oig.hhs.gov/fugitives/ by the agency’s office of inspector general, includes suspects connected to investigations in Florida, California, Michigan and New York City. Wehbe is the only New England case on the list.
The nearly-$3-million figure, the types of drugs involved and the large number of them led to his inclusion in the infamous group.
“For us in New England, he’s a priority,” said Susan J. Waddell, special agent in charge of New England for the DHHS’s inspector general’s office.
The DHHS’s investigators currently have about 170 active fugitive cases, said Donald White, a spokesman for the agency’s inspector general’s office. The agency uses the list to expose the range of cases it works on, he said, as well as ones with large dollar amounts. The list can generate leads, he said, and White said the agency was asking anyone with information about Wehbe to call 1-888-476-4453.
Wehbe, who ran a practice called Renaissance Medical Group with offices in Providence and North Providence, is accused of writing prescriptions for medications such as Percocet, Vicodin and OxyContin in excess of what his practice would have needed. Those drugs are valuable on the street. When the complaint against him was filed in 2008, the government’s estimate was that OxyContin was selling for between 50 cents and $1 per milligram, making an 80-milligram tablet worth $80. Tablets of Vicodin, the government said, typically sold for $4 to $6.
The affidavit supporting the complaint included a statement by one of Wehbe’s patients, identified as “JM,” who said that Wehbe was known on the street as “Dr. Feel Good.”
Wehbe was also charged with billing for excessive office visits, in some cases claiming 30 or more hours a day.
His practice started unraveling in December 2006, when state and federal investigators raided Renaissance’s offices. At the time, he employed five to seven other doctors as well as a nurse practitioner. Between 2002 and 2006, federal investigators said, the practice treated about 8,000 patients, around 4,800 of them Wehbe’s.
Records seized in the raid showed that Wehbe’s records of purchases of chemotherapy drugs didn’t match what he’d billed insurance companies. State health officials at the time said that could have been an instance of conventional billing fraud or worse, an indication that Wehbe was not giving cancer patients the medications they thought they were getting.
In April 2008, those findings prompted the state to suspend Wehbe’s medical license without a hearing, which state law only allows in cases when a physician is deemed to be an immediate danger to the public.
With Reports from Paul Grimaldi and Felice J. Freyer
jhill@projo.com
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, March 1, 2011
By John Hill
Journal Staff Writer
A Rhode Island doctor charged with fraud, money laundering and illegally distributing controlled drugs has made the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ 10 Most Wanted list, agency officials announced.
Tarek W. Wehbe, 46, has been a fugitive since he failed to show up for a court appearance in 2008 for a 152-count indictment that accused him of billing Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies $2.9 million for drugs he never bought, office visits that never happened and treatments that were never administered.
The DHHS list, posted online at http://oig.hhs.gov/fugitives/ by the agency’s office of inspector general, includes suspects connected to investigations in Florida, California, Michigan and New York City. Wehbe is the only New England case on the list.
The nearly-$3-million figure, the types of drugs involved and the large number of them led to his inclusion in the infamous group.
“For us in New England, he’s a priority,” said Susan J. Waddell, special agent in charge of New England for the DHHS’s inspector general’s office.
The DHHS’s investigators currently have about 170 active fugitive cases, said Donald White, a spokesman for the agency’s inspector general’s office. The agency uses the list to expose the range of cases it works on, he said, as well as ones with large dollar amounts. The list can generate leads, he said, and White said the agency was asking anyone with information about Wehbe to call 1-888-476-4453.
Wehbe, who ran a practice called Renaissance Medical Group with offices in Providence and North Providence, is accused of writing prescriptions for medications such as Percocet, Vicodin and OxyContin in excess of what his practice would have needed. Those drugs are valuable on the street. When the complaint against him was filed in 2008, the government’s estimate was that OxyContin was selling for between 50 cents and $1 per milligram, making an 80-milligram tablet worth $80. Tablets of Vicodin, the government said, typically sold for $4 to $6.
The affidavit supporting the complaint included a statement by one of Wehbe’s patients, identified as “JM,” who said that Wehbe was known on the street as “Dr. Feel Good.”
Wehbe was also charged with billing for excessive office visits, in some cases claiming 30 or more hours a day.
His practice started unraveling in December 2006, when state and federal investigators raided Renaissance’s offices. At the time, he employed five to seven other doctors as well as a nurse practitioner. Between 2002 and 2006, federal investigators said, the practice treated about 8,000 patients, around 4,800 of them Wehbe’s.
Records seized in the raid showed that Wehbe’s records of purchases of chemotherapy drugs didn’t match what he’d billed insurance companies. State health officials at the time said that could have been an instance of conventional billing fraud or worse, an indication that Wehbe was not giving cancer patients the medications they thought they were getting.
In April 2008, those findings prompted the state to suspend Wehbe’s medical license without a hearing, which state law only allows in cases when a physician is deemed to be an immediate danger to the public.
With Reports from Paul Grimaldi and Felice J. Freyer
jhill@projo.com
New home for moms fighting alcohol and drug addictions - Nashua, NH
New home for moms fighting alcohol and drug addictions - NashuaTelegraph.com
By PATRICK MEIGHAN
Staff Writer
Keystone Hall volunteer Cynthia Day, center, greets visitors Monday during an open house at the new family center named for her. The Cynthia Day Family Center is a residential program for mothers or expectant mothers recovering from addiction to drugs or alcohol. At far left (in purple) is Thisvi McCormick, the program coordinator.
NASHUA – The program is new, the location only temporary.
Keystone Hall opened the doors of its newest facility to the public in late morning Monday. Though a hard, cold rain kept attendance down, the relatively few soggy people who made it caught a glimpse of a new program for mothers or expectant mothers who are recovering alcoholics or drug addicts and their children.
The Cynthia Day Family Center opened Jan. 6 at 440 Amherst St., a former housing site for homeless veterans. Keystone Hall is run through Harbor Homes, Inc., which also manages the veterans program.
By spring of 2012, the family center will move to a new Keystone Hall facility further west at 615 Amherst St., said Annette Escalante, vice president of Keystone Hall, or as it’s formally known, the Greater Nashua Council on Alcoholism.
Up to eight women or expectant mothers can stay at the center, said Thisvi McCormick, the family center’s program coordinator. Each resident can live there for six months with one child up to age 6.
Currently, five women reside at the center. It opened with seven, but “a couple” were discharged from the program, McCormick said,
To enter the program, a woman must have already gone through detox and must have remained clean for 30 days, McCormick said.
However, no one is turned away, and those waiting to be admitted can detox at Keystone Hall, she said.
Highly structured with little free time allowed residents, the family center program is for “sobriety maintenance,” McCormick said.
Residents meet one-on-one with case managers and in small groups of two or three for counseling in such areas as parenting skills and domestic violence or to attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
Residents can’t leave the facility unless they’ve earned an overnight pass, but they can be visited by their sponsors if they’re in a 12-step program.
Women can only live at the center with one child. Residents with multiple children can see their other children on weekends.
The family center includes small, individual rooms for the mothers and their children, a play area and a kitchen – though food is cooked at Keystone Hall and brought to the center.
When the new facility opens, the family center will be in a separate wing and the residents isolated from the rest of the Keystone Hall clients.
The youngest woman now in the program is 22. McCormick said the program likely wouldn’t take someone older than 40.
Some of the residents are from outside Greater Nashua, and the program is open to New Hampshire residents only, McCormick said.
Many residents who come to the program are referred by the court system or by state child welfare officials. Some approach the center on their own, McCormick said.
One of the unusual aspects of the center is that it does accept women on methadone or Suboxone treatments as part of opiate replacement therapy, McCormick said.
“Coming off opiates can be damaging to fetuses,” she said.
Rooms are small and don’t contain televisions, though there is a TV in a community room for limited viewing hours.
With the structured program, there is a lot for residents to do, and they don’t have much free time, McCormick said.
Women also are forbidden from having iPods with screens, cell phones or laptops, she said.
Residents are required to commit to the program for six months with an option to receive services for up to a year, McCormick said.
Children can attend child-care, preschool or a kindergarten program through a contract with Marguerite’s Place, and children old enough for first grade will attend public schools, McCormick said.
The family center is named for Cynthia Day, a longtime volunteer at Keystone Hall. Day was a corporate vice president whose career and marriage were destroyed by alcoholism. After recovery, she became a psychiatric nurse working in the field of chemical dependency.
She attended the open house.
Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com.
By PATRICK MEIGHAN
Staff Writer
Keystone Hall volunteer Cynthia Day, center, greets visitors Monday during an open house at the new family center named for her. The Cynthia Day Family Center is a residential program for mothers or expectant mothers recovering from addiction to drugs or alcohol. At far left (in purple) is Thisvi McCormick, the program coordinator.
NASHUA – The program is new, the location only temporary.
Keystone Hall opened the doors of its newest facility to the public in late morning Monday. Though a hard, cold rain kept attendance down, the relatively few soggy people who made it caught a glimpse of a new program for mothers or expectant mothers who are recovering alcoholics or drug addicts and their children.
The Cynthia Day Family Center opened Jan. 6 at 440 Amherst St., a former housing site for homeless veterans. Keystone Hall is run through Harbor Homes, Inc., which also manages the veterans program.
By spring of 2012, the family center will move to a new Keystone Hall facility further west at 615 Amherst St., said Annette Escalante, vice president of Keystone Hall, or as it’s formally known, the Greater Nashua Council on Alcoholism.
Up to eight women or expectant mothers can stay at the center, said Thisvi McCormick, the family center’s program coordinator. Each resident can live there for six months with one child up to age 6.
Currently, five women reside at the center. It opened with seven, but “a couple” were discharged from the program, McCormick said,
To enter the program, a woman must have already gone through detox and must have remained clean for 30 days, McCormick said.
However, no one is turned away, and those waiting to be admitted can detox at Keystone Hall, she said.
Highly structured with little free time allowed residents, the family center program is for “sobriety maintenance,” McCormick said.
Residents meet one-on-one with case managers and in small groups of two or three for counseling in such areas as parenting skills and domestic violence or to attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
Residents can’t leave the facility unless they’ve earned an overnight pass, but they can be visited by their sponsors if they’re in a 12-step program.
Women can only live at the center with one child. Residents with multiple children can see their other children on weekends.
The family center includes small, individual rooms for the mothers and their children, a play area and a kitchen – though food is cooked at Keystone Hall and brought to the center.
When the new facility opens, the family center will be in a separate wing and the residents isolated from the rest of the Keystone Hall clients.
The youngest woman now in the program is 22. McCormick said the program likely wouldn’t take someone older than 40.
Some of the residents are from outside Greater Nashua, and the program is open to New Hampshire residents only, McCormick said.
Many residents who come to the program are referred by the court system or by state child welfare officials. Some approach the center on their own, McCormick said.
One of the unusual aspects of the center is that it does accept women on methadone or Suboxone treatments as part of opiate replacement therapy, McCormick said.
“Coming off opiates can be damaging to fetuses,” she said.
Rooms are small and don’t contain televisions, though there is a TV in a community room for limited viewing hours.
With the structured program, there is a lot for residents to do, and they don’t have much free time, McCormick said.
Women also are forbidden from having iPods with screens, cell phones or laptops, she said.
Residents are required to commit to the program for six months with an option to receive services for up to a year, McCormick said.
Children can attend child-care, preschool or a kindergarten program through a contract with Marguerite’s Place, and children old enough for first grade will attend public schools, McCormick said.
The family center is named for Cynthia Day, a longtime volunteer at Keystone Hall. Day was a corporate vice president whose career and marriage were destroyed by alcoholism. After recovery, she became a psychiatric nurse working in the field of chemical dependency.
She attended the open house.
Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)