FAITH FINLEY DEATH

FAITH FINLEY

17 years old
Dies in Restraint 12-13-08

(Scroll down for news articles, chronological order)

Cuyahoga County coroner rules Faith Finley's death a homicide

January 06, 2009
By Rachel Dissell
Plain Dealer Reporter

The death of a 17-year-old who suffocated while being restrained at a center for troubled children was ruled a homicide Monday.

Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller's ruling said Faith Finley was suffocating while she was restrained at Parmadale Family Services in Parma and also choked on vomit.

The ruling, however, did not imply "sinister" intent, said Powell Caesar, coroner's office spokesman. He said a homicide is a "death of an individual at the hands of another individual."

He would not elaborate on how Miller arrived at the ruling.

Parma police are investigating the Dec. 13 death at the center, which provides services for children with emotional problems. Once the investigation is done, the prosecutor's office will decide whether charges, if any, will be filed, said Detective Marty Compton.

Faith, who was placed at the center by Summit County Children Services several months ago, was restrained by child care workers after she had an outburst in her room and charged at staff, police said.

Sometime after she was released, staff found her on the floor and breathing shallow breaths, according to the first of two calls to 9-1-1.

During the second call, staff members can be heard yelling and searching for a protective mask so they could start CPR. They said she was not breathing and didn't have a pulse.

At one point, a gagging noise is heard, and a staff member says vomit is making it difficult to give her rescue breaths.

Antionette Finley, Faith's mother, said she doesn't believe the staff intentionally harmed her daughter. She said Faith was petite and did not need such forceful restraints and questioned the workers' experience and ability to handle the residents' behavior problems.

They killed my baby," Finley said. "They got a healthy, vibrant child who through no fault of her own had a lot of pressure in her life. She was a teenager and she was rebellious but she was very much alive, and they were supposed to protect her."

Tom Mullen, president of Catholic Charities, which runs Parmadale, said the agency was using restraint techniques approved by state agencies.

He said Parmadale is constantly reviewing staff training and the use of the restraints. Staff at the center use only body-to-body hold restraints, no straps or chairs or bed restraints. Beyond that, he said that the agency is continuing to pray for Faith's family.

Faith and her identical twin sister had been in the custody of Summit County since April. Her sister is still in another residential treatment center in Berea, where she is getting counseling for trauma associated with losing her twin, Finley said.

Summit County Children Services Executive Director John Saros said his agency has put their contract with Parmadale on hold. He said the agency already has removed five children it had placed at Parmadale and is looking to remove three others.

Saros said the agency will consider any changes Parmadale may make to its restraint policies when deciding if it will send any more youths to the center. The guiding rule in the Ohio Administrative Code allows a person to be restrained if he or she is a "danger to themselves or others."

"This is just really, really painful and disappointing for us to see," Saros said. "We're a child protection agency."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

rdissell@plaind.com, 216-999-4121

Plain Dealer Reporter

3 Parmadale Family Services workers fired in wake of Faith Finley death: State finds they did not follow rules in restraining girl Rachel Dissell

January 7, 2009

Three Parmadale Family Services child-care workers were fired Friday after a state review of a teen's death found employees failed to follow the facility's policies.

Faith Finley, 17, died in December after being restrained with her face to the floor.

Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller ruled last month that the actions of the workers contributed to her suffocating and choking on vomit. He ruled her death a homicide.

A Parma police investigation is continuing.

Tom Mullen, of Catholic Charities, which runs the residential treatment center where Faith died, said that the workers had been on leave.

Mullen said of the state report: "Based on what I received, some of our policies were violated."

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which licenses the Parmadale cottage where Faith was living, found that the facility did not follow several of its own policies, according to a department representative.

It said the center could not provide documentation that Faith's medication was properly distributed or the reason why medications may not have been distributed as described.

The department also said Faith's rights were violated when staff members restrained her because she had the right to be free of "physical abuse and inhumane treatment."

The workers also did not follow behavior management policies and procedures as written by the agency.

Parmadale has a right to appeal within five working days or submit a plan saying how it will correct the problems noted.

Any discipline of employees or firings can be considered part of the plan.

Mullen said he couldn't comment on the specific findings of the report because of the police investigation and possible civil action.

The department, one of several that licenses cottages at Parmadale, doesn't write policies for Parmadale or other facilities. The state-licensed facilities write their own policies on the use of restraint, isolation and training for the use of these techniques, which must be approved by the state department.

The department inspects facilities and monitors policy compliance.

The staff is supposed to use the least restrictive restraint possible, according to the Ohio Administrative Code. The face-down restraint is increasingly considered dangerous because it can reduce a person's ability to breathe. One state agency banned its use in November.

Last month, Gov. Ted Strickland called for a uniform policy on the use of restraints in Ohio. A group of state officials will make recommendations.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

rdissell@plaind.com, 216-999-4121

Faith Finley died after being restrained in controversial position

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/01/faith_finley_died_after_being.html

Posted by Rachel Dissell
Plain Dealer Reporter
January 10, 2009 07:00AM
Courtesty of the family

Fatih Finley, 17, suffocated after being restrained in a face-down position that has been banned by one state agency. A 17-year-old girl who suffocated while being restrained at a center for troubled children was held in a potentially deadly face-down position that was recently banned by at least one state agency.

The restraint has been blamed for the deaths of at least 40 children in facilities nationwide since 1993.

Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller said Faith Finley had been held in what is known as the prone restraint.

He ruled her Dec. 13 death a homicide Monday, saying she was suffocating while she was restrained at Parmadale Family Services in Parma and choked on vomit. Parma police are investigating.

A movement to ban the dangerous "prone restraint" has grown among agencies that serve children. The Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities banned it in November.

The danger of the restraint led to the ban, according to a memo sent to agencies that the department licenses. Copies went to at least a dozen additional state officials. "Research supports the belief that prone restraints are potentially fatal due to the impact this maneuver has on reducing a person's ability to breathe," the memo reads.

Unclear is whether Parmadale was aware of the memo.

Staff is trained on all the dangers and methods involved in restraints, said Tom Mullen, president of Catholic Charities, which runs Parmadale.

Staff is taught to use a face-to-the-ceiling restraint where staff members secure a child to the floor by pinning their arms and legs to the ground and not compressing the torso in any way, he said.

If staff did not follow the policy, action would be taken, he said. Two workers involved in the restraint on Faith are on paid leave pending the police investigation.

The face-down restraint, which puts pressure on the stomach area, can be especially dangerous if used on a person taking psychotropic drugs. The drugs can cause some to easily vomit while relaxing the gag reflex, making it harder for them to clear their throats. Faith was taking medication in that category.

Nationwide, since 1993, at least 64 children died and thousands were injured while being restrained in face-down and other methods. About half of the restraints that caused deaths were unnecessary, a review of restraint deaths by Cornell University Residential Child Care Project found.

Cornell's trainers, who have worked with Parmadale, teach both the face-up and facedown techniques as a part of their Therapeutic Crisis Intervention system but warn neither is safe. Facilities choose which methods suit their philosophy. Some choose never to use restraints.

"Every single restraint assumes a certain level of risk, including death," said Michael Nunno, the project's principal investigator. "You never want your intervention to be more risky than what the child is doing."

According to the coroner's ruling, Faith was restrained after an "outburst of disruptive behavior."

Faith had been tossing things around her room and may have approached the staff aggressively, said Parma police and Parmadale officials.

That type of behavior alone is not enough to restrain a child, Nunno said.

Workers often get into power struggles with kids they supervise, especially if the atmosphere in the facility is chaotic. Staff involved in such struggles should remove themselves from dealing with the children, he said.

According to police records and other sources, the situation in Parmadale's Cottage 14, where Faith lived, was particularly tense.

In the days leading up to her restraint, several children escaped, one stole a car, a child-care worker was injured by a teen and -- just before Faith died -- another girl in the cottage was beaten so badly, she was taken to the hospital.

People can be trained and tested over and over, Mullen said, but in the heat of a situation, it's hard to maintain control of an agitated child who is struggling with staff.

"What people need to understand is that these are interactions between humans," he said.

Bellefaire JCB in Shaker Heights, which also treats troubled children, uses restraint as a last resort, said Jeffrey Cox, clinical director.

"For us, disruptive is not enough," he said. If a child were to punch a staff member and walk away, that would not be a restraint situation because the immediate danger would be over, he said.

When restraints are used, the child's vital signs are carefully monitored, and children are not left alone immediately after being restrained, Cox said.

Faith was allowed to rest on the floor after she was released from the restraint, and workers later discovered her breathing was shallow. Parmadale staff lacked access to life-saving measures such as an automatic defibrillator to try to restart her heart.

The number of restraint-related injuries in Ohio is unclear because no agency collects the data. Information about major incidents, such as deaths or serious injuries, is supposed to be reported to the agency or agencies that license a facility. But that information is not shared.

In 2006, the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities, an umbrella group that includes county mental health boards, pleaded for the creation of a statewide system to report child injuries in facilities.

The report pointed out that thousands of restraint-related injuries each year, including rug burns, black eyes, bloody noses and broken teeth, are not required to be reported. It concluded that fear of liability and the potential of losing facilities, which are already in short supply, were reasons that reforms were not being pushed.

"We tinker around the edges, but nobody is biting the bullet and fixing this problem," Cheri Walter, CEO of the group, said at the time.

Asked this week if any changes had been made since the 2006 paper was printed, Walter said, "Frankly, nothing has changed."

But now, officials are facing the death of a 17-year-old.

"It's unfortunately taken kids' deaths to prompt these kinds of changes," Nunno said.

Parmadale death prompts Governor Ted Strickland to seek policy on restraints

Saturday, January 24, 2009
Rachel Dissell
Plain Dealer Reporter

Gov. Ted Strickland has called for a single statewide policy on the use of restraints like the one that contributed to the death of a 17-year-old at a center for troubled children last month.

John Martin, director of the Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, which banned the dangerous face-down restraint last year in agencies it licenses, will head the effort. Martin said he hopes for the prone-restraint ban to be adopted statewide.

Authorities have said the restraint, which holds a person with face to the floor, contributed to the death of Faith Finley at Parmadale Family Services in Parma, which is run by Catholic Charities.

Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller said she suffocated while being held in the restraint. Her death has been ruled a homicide. Faith's death caught the governor's attention, Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey said.

He said the governor had "grave concerns" about how the teen died.

In a memo to other state departments Friday, Martin called for the group that will craft policy recommendations to convene next week.

Ohio is among the states that have piecemeal regulation and tracking of the use of restraints.

Ohio has no central policy and leaves it up to individual agencies to set their own procedures.

There also is no one place that collects reports of injuries, deaths or other problems arising from the use of restraints.

Agencies that deal with children and the disabled in at least 14 other states have severely curtailed or banned some restraints - most commonly face-down restraints. The committee also will discuss collecting data on the use of restraints statewide.

Michael Rench, deputy director of community services for Martin's agency, said the committee's immediate business will be to move toward banning more-dangerous restraints by sharing his department's research on the prone restraint.

The committee would then work to craft further policy that moves away from relying on restraints in favor of other more positive intervention methods.

Agencies asked for input are: the Department of Youth Services, State Board of Education, Alcohol & Drug Addiction Services, the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Job and Family Services - the agency that licensed the Parmadale cottage where Faith died.

Bob Bowen, a trainer based in the Canton area who works with agencies that care for children, the mentally ill and people with disabilities, said the new policies need to, among other things, clearly define the term restraint and set limits for how long a person can be restrained.

"There are more regulations on how to humanely treat animals than people," said Bowen. The company no longer teaches any form of restraint that positions a person on the floor.

The Children's Health Act of 2000, passed after a series of articles in the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, chronicled 142 restraint-related deaths nationwide, limited the use of restraints and called on states to create policies about their use.

Bowen said that most have not complied and that there has been little enforcement of the act.

Thomas Hemmert, of the Ohio Legal Rights Service, an advocacy agency for the disabled, said his group was looking forward to the state banning the prone restraint and establishing standards that move toward other intervention.

Martin said that moving away from restraints altogether would take time.

"It's a kind of culture change and it's not something that occurs overnight," he said. "It's kind of our approach to get people to move forward voluntarily."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

rdissell@plaind.com, 216-999-4121

3 Parmadale Family Services workers fired in wake of Faith Finley death

State finds they did not follow rules in restraining girl

Saturday, February 07, 2009
Rachel Dissell
Plain Dealer Reporter