Unaccompanied alien children program care provider facilities do not include all required security measures in their checklists
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Issue brief (United States. Department of Health and Human Services. Office of Inspector General)
- Contributor(s):
- United States. Department of Health and Human Services. Office of Inspector General. Office of Evaluation and Inspections. issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, D.C. : U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, June 2020
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Child, Abandoned -- legislation & jurisprudence Child Abuse -- prevention & control Government Regulation Refugees -- statistics & numerical data Safety -- standards Security Measures -- statistics & numerical data United States United States. Department of Health and Human Services
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Why OIG Did This Review. Protecting children in the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program is an essential and ongoing responsibility of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). By law, ORR, which is within the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF), has custody of and must provide care for each child in the UAC Program. To address the needs of the children in its custody, ORR enters into grants or contracts with care provider facilities (facilities) to house and care for the children. ORR requires facilities to provide care in a child-friendly environment that does not pose a safety risk and has a non-institutional, home-like atmosphere. To mitigate against safety risks, ORR requires facilities to employ three physical security measures: (1) controlled entry and exit, (2) alarm systems, and (3) video monitoring. Further, ORR requires facilities to use facility inspection checklists (hereafter referred to as inspection checklists) to ensure that these required physical security measures are present and working. Similar to safety checklists used in other environments (e.g., hospitals and aircraft), these checklists can be used by facility staff to systematically check whether physical security measures are functioning and to self-identify concerns with measures that can leave children at risk for potential harm. This issue brief focuses on the extent to which selected facilities’ inspection checklists included the ORR required physical security measures, as well as ORR’s oversight of facilities’ use of inspection checklists to identify and address safety concerns. Our review does not address whether the selected facilities had the required physical security measures. To conduct this review, we analyzed inspection checklists submitted from 40 of the 45 selected facilities we visited, interviewed program directors and ORR Federal field specialists, and reviewed relevant ORR policy and guidance. (See the Methodology section for more information.) Office of Inspector General (OIG) staff briefed ORR staff on opportunities to improve physical security measures at facilities based on observations made during our onsite reviews. Other OIG reports have addressed different aspects of children’s safety when in HHS’s custody and care, including facility compliance with background screening requirements for the facility employees who have direct contact with children and the challenges facilities reported providing mental health services. Another OIG report focuses on incidents reported to ORR by facilities and challenges in the significant incident reporting process. What OIG Found. ORR relies primarily on facilities to self-identify and correct concerns with the physical security measures it requires. Inspection checklists provide a key tool for monitoring compliance with ORR’s required security measures. However, we found that 39 of the 40 facilities that provided us with their inspection checklists did not include prompts in their inspection checklists to check for one or more of the physical security measures required by ORR. Additionally, facilities that included these measures in their inspection checklists did not always describe in detail what elements of the measures to check. Some facilities’ inspection checklists also included checks of two additional measures not required by ORR—perimeters and exterior lighting—which work in conjunction with the required measures in controlling entry and exit from facilities. ORR does not provide guidance on how frequently facilities should use inspection checklists to check whether the required physical security measures are present and working, nor does it routinely oversee inspection checklist results. If facilities do not regularly check that their security measures are functioning, children potentially could be exposed to safety risks. For example, if a facility has inadequate controlled entry and exit measures, it could lead to unauthorized individuals entering a facility or children leaving unnoticed.
- Copyright:
- The National Library of Medicine believes this item to be in the public domain. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (19 pages))
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918282381506676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918282381506676