A long-term care provider for the intellectually disabled neglected a foster child when it overmedicated him, said the state's ombudsman.
TPR previously reported on the 15-year-old who nearly died this summer after living at two Maofu Home Health facilities in Sugar Land, Texas.
The child known only as M.R.F was expected to die and had been given a do not resuscitate order at one point.
“The provider, Maofu Home Health, did not ensure staff received proper training to correctly distribute and track all medications in accordance with their own policy,” said Morgan Shields in a Nov. 15 letter to the boy’s advocates.
The state investigation found Moafu staff neglected the boy as a result of the failures. The company was cited for two licensing violations.
Advocates described finding M.R.F. staying in a home without beds in the rooms, urine-soaked mattresses in the backyard and feces wiped on the walls. Medications were lying out on a table, accessible and unattended, throughout one of the advocates' visits, according to a complaint filed with the ombudsman’s office.
The boy recovered from near death, but it wasn’t clear what the lasting impact was to the boy’s body and mind.
A report from federal court monitors showed that an unnamed Department of Family and Protective Services staff person appeared to be deliberately misleading the boy's advocates.
The report claimed the DFPS worker asked an unnamed Maofu staff member to change a document to indicate that a different employee was caring for the boy after they moved him from the first Maofu facility to the second, so as to make it appear the child was managed by a different person, according to a text exchange included in the report. The goal, the report said, was to appease or mislead a court appointed special advocate and the boy’s attorney.
The ombudsman found DFPS had violated multiple policies, including ones around the boy’s civil rights. The ombudsman recommended retraining the staff member and her supervisor.
The DFPS staff member was ultimately taken off of the case. It wasn’t clear at publication whether the staff member still was employed by the department.
DFPS did not respond to TPR's request for comment.
