Troubled youth detention firm seeks to open migrant child shelter in Los Angeles
For nearly half a century, the for-profit firm VisionQuest has provided intervention and treatment programs to at-risk youth in states from Pennsylvania to California. But in recent years, struggling under the weight of debt, the firm has been casting about for a financial lifeline. Last summer, it finally found one in the booming business of migrant child detention. In July, the federal government handed the firm more than $25 million in four grants over three years to hold hundreds of the unaccompanied minors in its custody in California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.
These grants follow a 2017 federal grant for $8.9 million to run a long-term foster care program for migrant children in Arizona, which has already opened its doors, and a 2018 federal grant for $8.5 million to run a medium-security facility for migrant children in Philadelphia.
The latest federal grants promise to boost the company’s annual revenues – $28.6 million last year – by 30%, a game-changer for a company that has lost money each of the last two years. There’s just one problem: VisionQuest appears to have won the federal grants without having secured many of the leases and permissions it needs to open the new facilities.
As VisionQuest has sought to open shelters for unaccompanied minors in Philadelphia, San Antonio and Albuquerque, city and state officials have blocked its efforts. Much of the backlash stems from the company’s recent record in Philadelphia, where city officials ended a contract with VisionQuest in 2017 to run a shelter for youth referred by local courts or social workers. There, staff members had choked, slapped and injured children, and promised to “make life a living hell” for them, according to state inspection records later obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer. But the debacle in Philadelphia is just the latest in a long line of scandals for the Arizona-based company over the course of its 46-year history.
Read more: https://www.revealnews.org/article/troubled-youth-detention-firm-seeks-to-open-migrant-child-shelter-in-los-angeles/
(Reveal News (Center for Investigative Reporting)
