Alright – so, Ms. Adams who works at Minnesota Autism Center (MAC) in their Mankato location was charged by the Mankato police for failing to report child abuse to the authorities as required. The case is now done and she only got one year probation meaning as long as she does not violate the terms of the probation or repeat similar violation, her record will not reflect this crime and won’t even have this incident. I guess that is better than nothing. I think Katie Strong who is the licensed mental health professional there above Ms. Adams should’ve been charged as well.
There are many children in MAC centers that are sadly abused, restrained excessively and neglected, but no one has been able to do anything about it thus far. MAC is funded by the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS). Last year alone, MAC received $21,759,357 from DHS for ABA therapy. Yet, the state Medicaid agency whose responsibility is to assure individuals that are disabled, poor or elderly are safe keeps failing here.
DHS has no mechanism to assure our kids with ASD in MAC centers are safe and free from neglect and abuse. I mean zero, zilch and zap mechanism. This is soooo sad to me as an advocate but more importantly as an autism mom. Abuse is never ok for anyone, and so many of these kids can’t tell us what happened or defend themselves are clearly being abused at MAC centers, yet we have no way to protect them.
Shame on DHS for failing our kids with ASD yet again.
I know this is now becoming a broken record statement and I hate to use the race card every time, I just can’t help but think if this was a Somali child care center that was abusing or allowing abuse of children – what would DHS do? …think about it.
DHS would cry from every river to make sure those kids were protected. Yet when Ron Carey and Kathryn Marshall at MAC do it, DHS sleeps and pretends to be blind. I wonder why?
As usual, above words do not represent any committee, agency or candidate.
Idil – Autism Mom & Advocate