Always right to record abuse

What if you learned your elderly mother's caregiver had punched her in the eye? Or your day care provider left your four-year-old alone in the house for hours?

You'd be on the phone with the Department of Human Services faster than a pistol round fired from a bullet train, that's what.

Now imagine that the agency confirms the abuse and neglect. But they won't list the caregivers on the state's Central Abuse Registry.

The punch, the vanishing act were isolated incidents, unlikely to happen again, the investigator tells you. But they'll keep the file for a few years just in case it does.

It's not as crazy as it sounds. In fact, it's pretty much what has happened to Teresa Mulhausen in the past year.

Her dependent adult son Ryan, 29, has Fragile X syndrome, the most common form of inherited mental retardation, which makes him hyper-aroused and dependent on daily routine.

Last fall, he hit a caregiver who tried to give him medication too early.

She hit him back.

This summer, another caregiver from the same company abandoned Ryan and his roommate, leaving them without any help for two hours.

Both incidents were confirmed by protective service workers. But the caregivers won't be listed on the state's Central Abuse Registry because the investigator decided they shouldn't. The key word here is “confirmed”.

“Confirmed” is a special category that means the preponderance of evidence shows the abuse happened, but the protective service worker finds it was “minor, isolated and unlikely to reoccur.”

State legislators created the designation in the early 1990s, DHS spokesman Roger Munns told me, to create a third option for social service workers who, until that time, could only decide whether a case was founded or not.

“The category of ‘confirmed' permits the system to take note of the minor abuse without causing the person to lose his/her job or to prevent him/her from getting a job,” Munns wrote in an e-mail.

But I'm inclined to agree with Teresa, who said she thinks the words “minor, isolated and unlikely to reoccur” should never appear in the same sentence as abuse.

Professional care giving is tough work. The people who do it aren't paid enough and they aren't appreciated enough.

But something is wrong when a caregiver punches a man in her care, and the system's concern is whether or not she'll be able to find another job.

Jennifer Hemmingsen's column appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Contact the writer at (319) 339-3154 or jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com