Noah Berger for The Bay Citizen

One of three group homes in Oakland operated by Refuge

In Alameda County, there is just one emergency group-home shelter for emotionally disturbed teenagers. It is called Refuge, for Resource Environment for Underprivileged Groups Enterprise Inc., but according to state documents and former employees, it is anything but a safe haven.

Refuge, based in Oakland, has been cited 118 times for health, safety, personal rights and procedural violations during its 11-year existence, public records show. Violations included providing insufficient food and clothing, mishandling of residents’ money and medications, and abusive treatment by an inadequately trained staff.

On top of that, therapeutic support for the troubled young residents was all but nonexistent, two former employees say.

“Besides having a house and some food, I don’t know what other services they’re providing young people,” said Nicole Monroe, a former case manager in one of three six-bed Refuge homes in Oakland. “Not much was going on when I was working there.”

The troubles at Refuge, which serves young people who often come from backgrounds of abuse and neglect, illustrate the difficulties that state and local governments have in regulating facilities that care for the most vulnerable populations.

The state agency responsible for overseeing conditions inside group homes, the Community Care Licensing Division of the Department of Social Services, says that its inspectors look only for specific types of health, safety, procedural and personal rights violations, and that county social workers are responsible for assessing the quality of care.

County officials say it is the state’s job to assure that group homes function properly.

Despite the government fiscal crisis, the problems at Refuge do not appear to be entirely financial. The home receives $7,388 per resident each month from the state, thousands of dollars a month in Medi-Cal money for mental health services and $380,000 from Alameda County this year for keeping four emergency beds available at all times.

Monroe said her supervisor, Khea Gumbs, was often focused on money issues rather than client care. Monroe said Gumbs directed her to falsify reports to Medi-Cal each week in order to bill the state for more treatment than had been provided. Another former Refuge employee also said she received such directives. “When we did have to do our billing, we were told to inflate our time,” Monroe said. “If we spent five hours a week with one young person, we were asked to increase that to seven or eight.”

The other former employee said she told social service investigators about the issue, but the agency did not follow up. Gumbs and Jason and Dorothy Henderson, founders of Refuge, told The Bay Citizen that they did not want to comment for this article.

Many of the violations at Refuge, including those pertaining to food, clothing and client money, have been cited multiple times over the years.

Other, more isolated, violations involved interactions between residents and staff members. One youth was slammed into a wall in 2000; others were hit and cursed at by staff members in 2004, Community Care Licensing documents show.

In 2007, regulators substantiated claims that Refuge workers yelled at clients and “called them stupid.”