Broken System: Levels of Care

He figured he might as well be on his own, so he split. But he didn't get very far; when he was caught, his level of care was raised. So he was sent to the Krause Treatment Center, a lockdown facility in Katy.

McGary says Krause staff relied on fear to keep kids in line.

"The environment that they create is: 'Don't talk back, or you'll end up on the floor. Do what I say, don't give me a hard time, because I can give you an even harder time,'" he says.

And some of the kids may have known this was not a hollow threat: Four years before McGary came to Krause, three staff members there piled on an allegedly violent 14-year-old girl in an attempt to restrain her. Which they did, ultimately, by crushing her windpipe. Although her death was ruled a homicide, the three staff who actually laid on the girl, and the one who stood by and supervised, were no-billed by a grand jury. (Some Krause staff still seem to have trouble with the whole restraining thing; DFPS records show that, in the last two years, "two female staff watched and failed to render aid or assistance as a male staff member conducted a restraint alone on a female resident"; "residents and staff members witnessed a staff member hit a child in care on a vital area of the body as a form of punishment"; "staff member conducted an improper restraint by laying on top of a resident on the ground, which put pressure on the resident's torso and impaired the breathing"; and, related to another incident, "a staff member interfered with a Licensing investigation by requesting that residents write disclosure forms that proclaim the staff member's innocence in the allegations of this investigation.")

Krause spokesman Scott Carroll says the management at the center has changed since McGary was there. "Different management, different philosophy style, different therapeutic techniques."

He also says, of kids sent to Krause, "by the time they get to the Krause Center, one, they haven't been able to get the specialized help that they really need; two, they all arrive in tough, tough, hard-to-imagine life situations, otherwise they wouldn't be there — through no fault of their own."

McGary says his time in Krause was one of the lowest points in his life. Suddenly, a chain-locked refrigerator didn't seem so bad.

If there's one thing about the system he could change, McGary says it would be ensuring that LOCs are assigned by people who've actually met the child whose future they're deciding.

"Imagine if you were at a moment where you were at your most vulnerable; you've been taken from your family, placed in a shelter," he says. "You're surrounded by [strangers]...the first 30 days in that shelter, the staff will be taking logs on your behavior, how you interact with peers. All these things are large contributing factors in your level of care. I don't like the idea of someone who's never seen me, never interacted with me, never had anything to do with me reading 30 days of paperwork about me and determining from that whether or not I deserve to live with a family or [if] I should go to a residential treatment center. I think that placement issues should be decided by people who are directly involved with these kids. It just doesn't make sense to me..."

YFT's contract is up for renewal in ­August 2011.