GekeVenn: MENTOR

As mentioned in the Youth Villages post yesterday, foster care isn't only handled by government agencies. These services, intended to protect children, are farmed out in public-private partnerships to a burgeoning foster care industry that profits when children are removed from their homes. The federal government's $9 billion reimbursement of state funds paid into the foster care industry is what many call a perverse financial incentive to separate children from their biological families. (Starting in 2019, the Family First Act will reduce this funding and limit group home stays for children to two weeks.)

Another prominent company in the foster care industry is the Mentor Network, a for-profit private company based in Minnesota. According to SEC filings, most of Mentor's revenue comes from local, state, and federal government agencies.

Both the company facilities and the foster parents it recruits have been accused of various crimes against the children they serve, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, and murder. “In Maryland, at a grim Mentor foster home compound called 'Last Chance Farm,'” reported Aram Roston in Buzzfeed, “foster children were serially abused by their Mentor foster father for over a decade, while the company allegedly ignored repeated red flags.” Apparently, this man “caring” for foster children requested that children sent to him meet a certain criteria: “male, white, any age.”

In light of such allegations, the Senate Finance Committee investigated Mentor in 2015. In an attempt to influence members of the committee, Mentor hired former staffers of the two senators who initiated the investigation: Senators Ron Wyden and Orrin Hatch. Josh Kardon had been Senator Wyden's chief of staff for years, and Makan Delrahim was Senator Hatch's principal legal and policy advisor.

Sarah Magazine, spokeswoman for Mentor, was quoted as saying, “We retained Josh Kardon and Makan Delrahim, both of whom have significant experience working with Congress—including the Senate Finance Committee—to help us communicate with the Committee.”

Mentor's attempts to influence the Senate investigation failed, however, and in 2017 the committee released a damning report. It found that Mentor's death rate among foster children was 42 percent higher than the national average. Between 2005 and 2017, 94 children died while under Mentor supervision. Of those deaths, 38 were “unexpected,” meaning the child wasn't known to be suffering from a grave illness, and according to Mentor, “out of its control.” One child, two-year-old Alexandria Hill, was murdered by her foster mother who, according to Roston, was recruited and trained by Mentor.

The committee's report can be found here, which calls for increased oversight. Concurrently, Senators Hatch and Wyden introduced legislation entitled the Child Welfare Oversight and Accountability Act of 2017 to address the issues raised in the report. This bill, however, has not been passed by either the Senate or the House and continues to languish in committee.

Note, also, that four of the company's top executives have previously worked in various agencies of the Massachusetts state government.