Need Answer today! How to handle ee situation

GLC

We are a sexual abuse treatment center that deals exclusively with children who have sexually abused. We have a female therapist who works at our organization who babysits on another job, outside of our organization. She has been accused of molesting a 3 year old child through this babysitting service. This employee has been on paid leave by us for two weeks. Our regulations state that we cannot knowingly have an employee on our premises who has been accused of any type of crime against children. Child Protective Services is still investigating the case but it may be another month before the case if wrapped up. CPS has told us that the case will more than likely be unsubstantiated. This is a great employee of our organization and we do not believe that she committed this act.
My question is since it has been two weeks, this act occurred outside of the scope of employment with us, can we legally now ask her to use her own time to cover her period of absence, such as her vacation until the case has been closed by CPS? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Don D

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 11-01-02 AT 09:43AM (CST)[/font][p]Since there are so many investigative/oversight agencies that have control and authority over the licensing and closure of your facility, you cannot afford to make a mistake with this one. The worst possible course of all is to proceed or ignore based on the emotion of 'not feeling she did it'. That's totally irrelevant. All the speculative chatter you'll hear on the Forum about the possibilities of whether she did it and the fairness or unfairness of suspension, etc. are meaningless in the environment where you work. Your administrator of your facility knows full well what dangers are inherent in keeping a person on staff with this charge having been made. It could cost the facility to lose its license or at minimum might cause you to lose state or other funding or referral sources for a period of time. If the administrator doesn't have an immediate answer, she or he should call the State Attorney General Child Services Oversight Division (not the welfare department for God's sake!) or the division that investigates abuse of elderly and infirm and nursing homes and psychiatric facilities with children. Also your administrator should have already gotten advice from an attorney with experience in your industry.

(EDIT) And I doubt that the state attorney general's office or the County District Attorney would wait 'a month' for child services to muddle through the investigation. Also, you should ignore their speculation that it probably won't be substantiated. These are the same people who lost some 3000 children in the system in Florida.

Rockie

I agree with Don on this one. Given your environment and the fact that you say your regulations state you cannot have anyone on staff "accused" of anything like this, I would say you need to terminate. If it was any other type environment, I would probably say "suspend until the employee is either absolved or charged". But, in child care, you cannot afford this type of luxury. Unfortunately, even if acquitted, this individual and your facility will have a stigma against it if you continue to employ this person.

I keep remembering the McMartin Daycare fiasco several years back and I certainly don't envy anyone who might be open to this type of litigation.

Theresa Gegen TX

To answer the question you asked: You can put her on unpaid leave or force her to use her vacation. I would not continue to pay her, as the investigation may strech several months.

Good Luck!

SDDCHR

I would not terminate. Let the investigation continue but in the mean time, suspend without pay until a decision is made wether or not to terminate her employment. Then base your decision on the findings.

Crout

I agree with Theresa on this one. So long as you are in full compliance with the regulations you can keep the EE on unpaid leave. Don't you have a policy that details this? I find that hard to believe. In the child care field, allegations against staff are made all the time by kids. The majority are unfounded.

Hatchetman

For years I worked in a public sector agency that handled child abuse cases including sexual abuse (investigations, criminal referrals to the DA, placement petitions, counseling, etc). I worked in its employee relations area handling investigations and discipline, including discharge. We sometimes had employees alleged to have been abusive toward children under the care and protection of the agency or toward their own children or neighbors', etc.

The most interesting situation one day arose when an allegation came through stting that the manager over the section that handles discipline, the one I worked for, had abuse or was abusing his own child. In fact the manager had been a child protective worker during his initial period with the agency. What senior management did then was to let the manager know of the allegation and arranged for the manager to take paid vacation time off pending the outcome of the investigation.

Shortly afterward, not too long about two or three weeks, the investigation was resolved and the allegations were found not to be true. And the manager returned to the job.

Don't fire the employee merely on allegations. Talk to her and see if something such as allowing her to go on paid vacation or leave during this time would be fair and then have the people investigting complete the investigation within a resonable period of time. After all, she is a professional and probably will fully understnad the predicament that she and the agency now face and will be willing to meet it half way.

An investigation may not take months as others have suggested. Of course, a lot depends on what is alleged, but it sounds like as you indicated it only involves one child. Also, I would make sure senior management carefully reviews the investigation's "facts and findings" to make sure that bias and prejudice of the investigators were not involved in this one since it involves a colleague, who they may know or have some thoughts about.

And of course, they (investigators and management) need to not only keep it confidential as requried by state laws on such issues but also confidential within the agency -- it should be a "need-to-know only" basis. After all, even if she is found not to have committed abus, if it becomes known that there were allegations against her, co-workers may react differently toward her.

If it turns out to be true, then of course, fire her.