Unhealthy children’s program is cited

By Timothy Pratt

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2006 | 7:40 a.m.

Hundreds of children from poor families enrolled in the Las Vegas Valley's Head Start program are not being given adequate medical and dental care, a federal Head Start official said.

Fewer than two-thirds of the approximately 1,800 children in the valley's program received physical and dental exams as required by the U.S. Head Start Bureau, said Frank Fuentes, acting associate commissioner for the agency in Washington.

Fewer than one in four who needed dental treatment received it, Fuentes said. The conclusions were based on figures supplied by the local program.

"These numbers are unacceptable ... and there could be illnesses and disabilities that aren't being taken care of," Fuentes said.

The valley's program is run by the nonprofit Economic Opportunity Board, which uses about $12.2 million in federal funds to operate 15 Head Start centers, helping poor families obtain education and health and child care for children up to age 5.

A year ago the Washington office, concerned about failures at the EOB, decided to replace it by putting the contract out for bid. The Head Start Bureau based its decision on years of negative reviews of the operation, including findings of questionable expenses and poor service.

But the local agency appealed that decision though administrative channels and continues to operate the program pending a final ruling.

The program has fallen behind in medical services for more than a year as most of its health care workers quit. The depleted staff has not completed physical, dental, blood, vision and hearing checkups by federally required deadlines, or kept track of immunizations, former employees said.

Several former Head Start employees said the situation might be worse than the federal agency's records show. They also questioned the program's ability to keep up with immunizations and newborn checkups.

Fuentes said bureau personnel would be visiting Las Vegas in February to verify records.

Lester Murray, the EOB's fifth executive director in the last two years, and Kimberly Bailey Tureaud, the organization's fourth media contact during the same period, did not respond to calls and e-mails from the Sun asking for comment.

Sandra D'Amico, a licensed practical nurse formerly with the program and a 21-year veteran of Head Start in Nevada and Massachusets, said she quit in October because she felt "the kids are at risk."

In an interview, she said the number of nurses dropped from nine to two in the last two years. That left the remaining nurses with a caseload of 900 children each.

The nurses' duties include ensuring that the federally required checkups are completed on time. Each exam has a deadline of 30 or 60 days from the beginning of the school year or the date of a child's enrollment.

They also must check on newborns within two weeks of birth.

D'Amico said she had finished 45 required hearing checkups by the first week of October, and that the other nurse may have done as many or slightly more. But based on those numbers, more than 1,600 children had not been seen as of the last few days before the deadline for that type of exam.

None of the other checkups had been completed, she said.

Similarly, immunization records had not been sorted -- a requirement for admitting the children to the centers at the beginning of the school year.

"When I left, we were still going through stacks of immunization records ... many were missing," she said.

The day she quit, she had two visits scheduled with at-risk newborns. But she was told to try and complete hearing tests instead.

"I was not going to not see the babies," she said. "I told them I quit.

"This is not a joke -- we have kids who are disabled, immune-deficient, with cancer, seizures ... If you say to me, 'Tell me about this kid,' I couldn't tell you since it wasn't documented."

D'Amico said the program tried to cut costs by conducting cursory dental exams. A complete exam should include X-rays and fluoride treatments for the older children, as well as a treatment plan, she said.

At the Herb Kaufman Head Start Center on Perry Street on Monday afternoon, Isaura Garcia, mother of 4-year-old student Jair Mojica, recalled her son's school-sponsored visit to the dentist in September.

She said the dentist looked at her son's mouth and found it "full of cavities." But she said she has seen no plan to treat the cavities to date, and is hoping to get a job with insurance to take care of the problem herself.

Sharon Russell, who quit her Head Start administrative job in December, said her duties during the last three years included entering data on checkups and immunizations into computers. The records "weren't up to date," she told the Sun. "I'm sure of that."

She said two additional nurses came to the program in November, but left within three weeks.

"I would believe the kids' health and safety is at stake" in the program. "They're playing Russian roulette."

Timothy Pratt can be reached at 259-8828 or at timothy@lasvegassun.com.