Sex offenders living in nursing homes
When Wes Bledsoe the co-founder of Oklahoma City-based citizen’s advocacy group, A Perfect Cause, gets into heated discussions about allowing sex offenders to reside in nursing homes, he is not above using shock value to get his point across. “Put them in day care centers with children,” he says.
“It’s insane to put that kind of violent or sexual offender in a population that cannot basically defend themselves and for a variety of reasons could be intimidated for reporting on them,” said Bledsoe, a former EMT/paramedic. “If it’s insane to put them in a day care center what makes (it) more sane to put them in with another vulnerable population that for a variety of reasons cannot defend themselves and for a variety of reasons may not be able to know what’s happening to them?”
The issue of sex offenders residing in nursing homes is not new. It bobs up to the surface of the national consciousness every once in a while and it happens to be making headlines now as Iowa contemplates proposed legislation that would require long-term care facilities to notify staff, residents, residents’ families and the broader community when a registered sex offender is admitted to a facility.
There is no industry standard for how nursing homes and other long-term care facilities handle having sex offenders residing in their facilities, and state laws vary from state to state, said Elliott Frost, director of ProCare and senior policy analyst at LeadingAge New York, an advocacy association for seniors. In New York, for instance, nursing homes aren’t required to tell their residents or their families that a sex offender is residing in the facility.
“Certainly the expectation would be that they’d do anything that they need to in order to safeguard other residents and visitors and children who might come to the nursing home,” said Frost.
“To protect our residents and staff we believe that a national process, including a national database of sex offenders, should be established for sharing relevant information about convicted sex offenders that could affect the safety and security of patients and caregivers before the offender is admitted,” said Greg Crist, vice president of public affairs for the American Health Care Association, the country’s largest member association for long-term and post-acute care providers.
But figuring out a standard that is both ethical and protects the bottom line is complicated, Frost said, because long-term care facilities are faced with a serious dilemma: tell residents and their families, which many consider the “right” thing to do, and risk that families will pull their loved ones out of the nursing home or that new potential residents will vanish.
And there are other business considerations. Staff members may not want to work at a facility with sex offenders living there so retention may be affected. Not to mention the cost of providing appropriate training to staff so they can properly supervise these residents who may have psycho-social needs that go beyond what many facility rank and file are trained to handle.
As Bledsoe sees it, it’s ludicrous for the industry not to have standards in place. “When you put predators in with the prey, somebody’s going to get bit. It’s not a question. It is going to happen,” said Bledsoe. “The bottom line is if something happens with one of these offenders then you’re going to get sued.”
His organization recommends long-term care facilities require a criminal background check of potential residents; form a plan for the facility and its residents that will ensure everyone’s safety if sex offenders are living at the facility; create separate facilities for sex offenders; use video monitoring; and have a policy on consensual sex.
“This is an easy problem with an easy solution,” he said. “People just don’t deal with it.”
