Abuse and neglect

IT IS SADLY clear that some people who provide social and human services to the state are interested mostly in serving themselves. State officials need to ferret out those who misuse funds meant for the care of the mentally ill, mentally retarded, and neglected children.

Last week, state Auditor Joseph DeNucci cited the residential Riverside School, a special education facility in Lowell, for spending more than $1.7 million in state money on a variety of questionable expenses over a 33-month period from 2001 to 2003. It seems DeNucci hit the mother lode of misused funds. The audit's findings include at least $264,468 of inadequately documented expenses, such as $12,465 for season tickets to the Red Sox, at least $430,000 in excess costs to rent space from a related company owned by Riverside's executive director, nonprogram-related expenses for snowboards, skis, and gifts, and $91,035 in compensation to the director's wife for bookkeeping services, despite what the auditor calls her ''questionable qualifications." Auditors cited spending for lobster, beer, wine, and other items that hardly seem to match the school's mission of serving boys ages 7 to 16, including 37 clients of the state Department of Social Services.

Frank Adamo, the school's former executive director, described the audit as ''disproportionate." His attorney, Bruce Singal, vigorously defends the quality of educational services provided by his client and argues that Riverside students benefited from the recreational expenses. The audit's findings, he said, can be explained largely by Riverside's poor bookkeeping and accounting practices.

The state depends on a network of roughly 1,100 private providers to care for residents in need of intensive social and human services. Andrea Dodge, the chief administrative officer for the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services, says that the ''vast majority" of the contractors in the $2.4 billion system are honest and competent.

We hope that is the case, though the problem could be deeper than officials think. The state auditor conducts just 20 random audits of human service vendors each year. About a dozen of the reports uncover misuse of public funds. Most of the cases don't rise to the level of the Riverside School or the Community Group Inc. of Wakefield, a job-training center for the retarded that prompted a 2003 audit citing a pattern of spending sprees on luxury items by former director David Slater. But the misused funds certainly add up.

Human service agencies are seeking to recover roughly $25 million from 35 flawed vendors who were audited from 2001 to 2005, according to the state auditor's office. An audit is now underway to determine how much the state has actually recouped during that period. The answer, still weeks away, will say a lot about the effectiveness of the so-called corrective action plans that the state negotiates with wayward vendors.

This is a field where the focus is properly on children who have been abused or worse, but that is no excuse for ignoring issues of financial abuse. The misuse of funds by even a few contractors can quickly undermine public trust in the entire social services network. Several state departments track the financial statements of prospective contractors, but field audits are rare. One solution might be to expand the auditing teams in human services agencies to supplement DeNucci's work.

Civil and criminal penalties would be another way to get the attention of contractors. The state attorney general occasionally makes an example of a dishonest contractor. But few such investigations are underway at the AG's office. And active investigations tend to drag on too long. The 2003 Slater case, for example, still remains under review. Absent severe charges and penalties, some contractors thumb their noses at the state. One common tactic is to threaten bankruptcy when confronted with allegations of wrongdoing, raising the fear that the state's neediest residents will be left without services of any kind.

Some providers behave as if they, not state officials, control the system. It's galling. Adamo, for example, continues to receive a $125,000-per-year consultancy fee from the new operator of the Riverside School.

The state's heavily privatized social and human service network is only as good as the ability to oversee it. Every dollar used by a provider for expensive meals, lavish gifts, or entertainment is one dollar less to provide baseline care and dignity for the mentally retarded, abused children, and those suffering from mental illness. The state's social service and law enforcement officials need to put an immediate stop to contractors who wrap themselves in the guise of good works only to feast like sultans on state contracts.