"The staff of the Black Hills Children’s Home should have called 911 immediately rather than waiting one hour and 41 minutes after a girl ran away from the facility, according to reports from two regulatory agencies.
The reports also say, among other things, that the facility lacked a sufficient emergency preparedness plan, failed to conduct training or drills for runaways, fell into complacency after previous attempted runaways, conducted an initially disorganized search for the runaway girl, used several different radio communication channels during the initial search instead of one common channel, and did not follow the organization’s own policy regarding lost children on campus."
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"The CMS report includes quotes from an interview with the program director at the Children’s Home, Tim Fitzgerald, who said, “It took staff 1.5 hours to contact 911, that should have been done when staff first lost sight of her.”
The Children’s Home had a Lost Child on Campus policy that dated to 1999, according to the CMS report, and one of the steps in the policy was notification of law enforcement.
But the policy was not followed, because staff had not been trained or drilled on it, the CMS report said. The facility now has a new runaway policy that says that 911 must be called immediately, and staff must now receive training, testing and drilling on the policy.
The DSS report also mentioned 911, saying in part, “If a child runs from a staff member and visual contact is lost, 911 must be called immediately.”
Facility botched runaway response, reports say
ETA: Sorry for the failed formatting, my fix isn't working.
6-16 inches of snow.
