State took nine months to investigate complaints about Tucson-area children's home

Editor's note: This story was updated to correct the last name of the facility's owner-manager.

A Tucson-area home for troubled children, faced with possible closure last year for posing an “immediate danger” to residents, survived the threat and remains in business after paying a $2,000 state fine and agreeing to improvements, public records show.

In a case that raises questions about how well the state monitors such sites, it took nine months and five complaints before the Arizona Department of Health Services sent inspectors to investigate conditions at Dream Builders, a nine-bed facility for youth with mental health conditions near West Twin Peaks Road and Interstate 10, northwest of the city.

The five complaints alleged numerous health and safety violations including a spotty food supply, inadequate supervision by unqualified personnel and failure to provide some residents with adequate mental health care, according to documents obtained by the Arizona Daily Star through public records requests.

State inspectors found a total of 23 licensing violations during their May 18 visit, including two cases in which Dream Builders gave inspectors “false and misleading information,” public records show.

Dream Builders’ owner-manager Chris Davis did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent over four days to three addresses she listed in state records. A woman who answered the facility’s phone number but did not give her name said “Chris has no comment.”

In July, the state served Dream Builders with a notice of intent to revoke its operating license because conditions at the home were a “direct threat to the life, health and safety of the patients,” the notice said.

Some Dream Builders residents were wards of the state placed there by the Arizona Department of Child Safety, public records show. In December 2020, the child safety agency signed a one-year contract with Dream Builders to send children there for behavioral health treatment after the state removed them from their families.

But four months later, the agency stopped sending children to the home and allowed the contract to expire in December 2021, said spokesman Darren DaRonco, who did not provide a reason for the decision.

No breakfast, no background checks

The lone staff member on duty when inspectors arrived had no qualifications, no record of a criminal background check and was assigned to work alone at the facility for 16 hours a day, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, the records show.

Another staffer who worked 12-hour shifts on weekends also wasn’t qualified and hadn’t been background checked. Neither worker had proper first-aid and CPR training and neither had been tested for tuberculosis as the law requires, inspectors found.

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In the home’s kitchen, an undated menu posted on the wall said sausage and cheese croissants and hot cocoa had been served for breakfast that day. But inspectors realized around 10 a.m. that the residents, who get up at 6 a.m., had not been fed. Ingredients for the menu’s proposed lunch of chicken wraps and salad also was nowhere to be found, records show.

State law requires menus at live-in facilities to be closely followed and approved by a licensed dietician to ensure adequate nutrition. The Dream Builders staffer on duty that day told inspectors the menus aren’t followed and said residents hadn’t had breakfast yet because they qualify for free school breakfasts and lunches and those meals usually were not picked up until about 10:30 a.m.

Inspectors also found cases in which some children were not evaluated to determine their needs, or had not received the amount of counselling their treatment plan called for. In two cases, Dream Builders discharged children without the OK of a medical or mental-health provider and without the associated documentation required by law, inspectors found.

The cases in which inspectors received “false and misleading” information involved illegal alterations to tuberculosis test results and first-aid training certificates for two staff members, the inspection reports said.

Settlement agreement

In October, the state health department signed a settlement agreement that allowed Dream Builders to stay in business by paying a fine and submitting an extensive plan of correction to address its problems.

Health department spokesman Steve Elliott said the state doesn’t necessarily intend to revoke the license of every agency that receives a revocation notice. The preferred outcome is for a troubled operator to make the improvements required to operate legally, he said.

The health department “regularly issues notices of revocation with a goal of bringing facilities into compliance with regulations. In the vast majority of cases, a notice of revocation leads to a settlement under which a facility agrees to a plan to correct deficiencies,” he said

“Behavioral health facilities offer much-needed services in our communities, and our goal whenever possible is to bring a facility into compliance.”

The settlement agreement called for the state to conduct unannounced inspections at Dream Builders, but four months later, no further inspections have occurred. Elliott said the state will conduct an unannounced visit at a future date.

Asked about the nine-month lag between the time the first complaint was filed and when the state sent inspectors in, Elliott said the health department gives top priority to complaints that involve “immediate risk to the health, safety and well-being of residents.”

Complaints that don’t involve immediate risk are investigated “in as timely a manner as possible,” he said.