instruction:
Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
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Paragraph: WPRI-TV reports that a review of state Department of Health records found at least 450 health violations. The number is likely larger because 56 schools were marked for re-inspection, and some have been inspected multiple times. “Schools are really important because we have a lot of little kids,” said Cathy Feeney, chief of the agency’s retail food service program. “If one thing goes wrong, a lot of people can get sick.”   Rodent droppings were found at the middle school and at an elementary school in East Greenwich. Records show inspectors returned to both schools several times in October and November. Victor Mercurio, the East Greenwich superintendent, said the district is working with a pest control company. Schools in communities including Barrington, Pawtucket, Providence, and Woonsocket have also been flagged for pest problems. Inspectors have also found other issues including debris on surfaces, dumpsters in the wrong place and appliances in poor repair. Several schools were forced to throw out food because it was not stored at the proper temperature. None of the violations discovered in any of the schools have resulted in the closure of a cafeteria. Claim: Multiple health code violations found at school cafeterias.
answer:
Public health officials have found hundreds of health code violations in cafeterias at schools across Rhode Island.


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Paragraph: The lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of a dozen children against Gov. Jim Justice, the state Department of Health and Human Resources and other state officials. The 105-page complaint describes stories of neglect and harm done to foster children while under the department’s care. Many were in inadequate and dangerous placements, left without necessary services or forced to languish in foster care for years, including a 17-year-old suicidal boy who sleeps in a locked cell at a juvenile detention center. Filed by a Charleston law firm and nonprofit advocacy groups A Better Childhood and Disability Rights West Virginia, the lawsuit said the state’s child welfare system has “significant administrative problems that hinder its ability to operate effectively.” “For years, the state has ignored repeated recommendations about how to fix the damaging West Virginia foster care system,” Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood, said in a statement. “Children are being sent to institutions, placed in foster homes without any services, and abandoned by the state.” New York-based A Better Childhood has filed similar lawsuits in several states. DHHR Secretary Bill Crouch said changes were made to the child welfare system starting in 2013 and efforts have increased every year since. Crouch said the lawsuit will cost the state millions of dollars “and was filed by a company that has never contacted us to ask the question: ‘What are you doing to fix these problems?’ We welcome the opportunity to make our case in court.” The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this year, West Virginia agreed to expand mental health services for children after a federal investigation found the state unnecessarily institutionalized kids with emotional or behavioral disorders. In the case of the 17-year-old boy, the lawsuit said he was physically abused by his family and has been under DHHR care since 2012. He lived in group homes and residential care centers before being sent to a juvenile detention center, where he sleeps on a mattress on a cement floor in a locked cell. He suffers from depression, has attempted suicide several times and will be homeless when he ages out of the system within the year, the lawsuit said. In September, the DHHR told lawmakers that 651 foster care children, mostly teen boys, have run away from group care settings or schools in less than a year. “Not only are we failing to provide federally mandated care, but we are also failing to prepare these children for what lies ahead and instead condemning many of them to a life of abuse and homelessness once they age out of foster care,” plaintiffs’ attorney Richard Walters said. The DHHR’s foster care ranks have swelled to about 6,900 children — an increase of more than 60% from the same time in 2015 — as the state grapples with the opioid addiction epidemic. West Virginia has by far the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the nation. The lawsuit said three siblings ages 2, 3 and 4 were placed under DHHR care because of drug-addicted parents, but the children have moved from one foster home to another “due to DHHR’s inability to appropriately develop case plans and to follow department procedures.” West Virginia can no longer use the opioid epidemic as an excuse, the lawsuit said. “The foster care crisis in West Virginia is not an issue that just arose in the last 4-5 years, it’s a systemic problem that has festered in the state for almost 20 years,” said Jeremiah Underhill, legal director of Disability Rights West Virginia. The lawsuit also says the state failed to maintain an adequate number of appropriate foster homes and resorts to quick placements among relatives without vetting or monitoring to ensure children’s safety. The reliance upon kinship caregivers has increased more than 30 percentage points over the past five years. State lawmakers have limited placement of a child in an out-of-state facility unless it’s closer to the child’s family or the child has a health issue that cannot be addressed by an in-state facility. Claim: Federal lawsuit targets West Virginia foster care system.
answer:
The overwhelmed foster care system in opioid-ravaged West Virginia has failed to protect children, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday.


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Paragraph: Moira O’Neill, director of the Office of the Child Advocate, said the center operated by Granite Pathways was unusual in that it was licensed by the Department of Health and Human Services but was not certified by the division that oversees child welfare. While that’s not a requirement because the Division for Children, Youth and Families didn’t directly place children at the facility, without that certification, it is unclear who had oversight over quality and safety, O’Neill said. “We have issues with the extent of oversight DCYF provides to certified agencies, but at a bare minimum, they know who’s there, they re-certify them every two years, they provide technical assistance. There’s some expectation that someone has an idea of what’s going on in the program,” she said in an interview. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu and the health department announced on Nov. 27 the state was canceling its contract with Granite Pathways, which had been operating the 36-bed facility in Manchester for just over a year. A summary report released by the department Monday said that in a span of less than two weeks, four of the 10 residents were taken to hospitals after taking drugs one of them smuggled in, a fifth took multiple doses of prescription medication in an apparent suicide attempt and a sixth drank a bottle of hand sanitizer. The remaining residents have since been transferred, and the contract officially ends Dec. 27. Some of the residents at the center were known to the child welfare agency, said O’Neill, who has been reviewing their records. “In our preliminary review, we found that there were children who were placed there who have really complicated needs, and we don’t know if that program had the capacity to serve those needs,” she said. O’Neill said she sent the Department of Health and Human Services a list of questions in late November about what the facility knew about the children, its capacity to meet their needs and how the program was supervised. As of Tuesday, she had not received answers. “If we are going to understand the circumstances that prompted seven ambulance transports, we must understand how those children came to be at the facility and what transpired in assessing and treating them,” she said. Jake Leon, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the department agrees with O’Neill that it is important to ensure that children get the services they need. He said the department has addressed and continues to address similar questions, but responses must remain confidential to protect clients’ privacy. “DHHS monitored Granite Pathways’ compliance with its contractual obligations and is still compiling information regarding the organization’s noncompliance. There is also an ongoing investigation by DCYF that must be kept confidential,” he said in an email. Patrica Reed, state director at Granite Pathways, said the nonprofit’s leaders and board of directors were still reviewing the health department’s report. “The end of this contract does not end Granite Pathways’ commitment to its mission of supporting individuals with substance use disorders and mental illness in achieving their life goals as valued members of their communities,” she said in a statement. But the trouble at the youth treatment center has raised questions about the state’s approach to funding substance abuse treatment in general and Granite Pathways in particular. Since 2016, it has been a subsidiary of The Fedcap Group, a New York-based nonprofit that focuses on helping people overcome barriers to economic well-being through workforce development, education, occupational health and economic development. With close to $300 million in annual revenue, the parent organization has government contracts in 22 states, and its acquisitions include Easterseals programs New York, Rhode Island and parts of Texas. In New Hampshire, Granite Pathways was a year into a four-year, $15.6 million contract for the youth treatment center. According to the state expenditure register, the organization has been paid $4.1 million since 2012, including just under $900,000 in the current fiscal year. Under the hub-and-spoke system the state launched this year to connect people to opioid addiction resources, Granite Pathways was awarded $5 million in federal funding over multiple years to run the two largest hubs, in Manchester and Nashua. Contracts are approved by the five-member Executive Council, and at least one member has expressed concern about Granite Pathways in the past. In June, when the council approved a $345,000 contract related to treatment for adolescents, Councilor Andru Volinsky noted that the organization already was running the opioid response hubs and called for “continued vigilance” to ensure it could keep up with all its responsibilities. “We’ve had, in particular when trying to quickly build out our substance abuse response, a number of instances where the financial management of private nonprofits was not strong. We haven’t really had strong capacity to oversee that at DHHS,” he said in a recent interview. “My concern at the time of this Granite Pathways contract was that we were again placing what I think are state responsibilities onto a private contractor, and we still haven’t built an infrastructure to oversee those private contractors.” Volinsky, a Democrat, said he doesn’t know whether the state should build out its own capacity to respond to the substance abuse crisis, or whether it’s enough to rely on outside groups and closely monitor them. “I could legitimately understand the arguments either way,” he said. “But to almost blithely continue to invest in outside agencies without oversight doesn’t make sense.” In announcing the closing of the youth treatment center, officials said the state is taking 30 days to review all of its contracts with Granite Pathways and may take further action. The health department also has increased its oversight of substance use disorder treatment centers in the last year after one of the largest facilities closed. Those efforts have included financial audits and the appointment of a new director at the Office of Program Integrity. Claim: Child advocate sees lack of oversight at youth treatment hub.
answer:

New Hampshire’s only residential treatment center for teens struggling with addiction operated with an apparent lack of oversight before it was shutdown earlier this month, the director of a state watchdog office said Tuesday.