Straight Inc. To Get License // One-Year Renewal Follows New Policy On Restraining
St. Petersburg Times, September 6, 1989
By Norma Wagner
PINELLAS PARK - PINELLAS PARK - State officials today plan to renew a one-year license to Straight Inc. now that the drug and alcohol treatment center has agreed to prohibit clients from restraining each other.
"The policy changes they made are very explicit in that they say no one but adult staff in the program will be permitted to restrain clients, which is what we were after," Ivor Groves, an assistant secretary for the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS), said Tuesday.
Straight officials rewrote the center's client restraint policy after HRS ordered them to do so in a letter mailed Aug. 25. The letter said Florida law prohibits clients from restraining one another, and that the responsibility must lie solely with trained staff.
HRS officials in June denied the center a full license renewal because of concerns about restraining methods, client privacy and records maintenance.
They discovered identical problems at Straight's only other Florida treatment center in Orlando, and both facilities were issued temporary, 90-day operating licenses.
Identical policy revisions were submitted by both centers, officials said.
The Orlando center received its full-term operating license Aug. 31, the day its temporary license expired.
HRS officials plan to renew Straight's Pinellas Park license today when it expires, said HRS spokeswoman Elaine Fulton-Jones. HRS officials usually inspect facilities annually. But the Straight centers will be inspected every three months to make sure the new policies are being followed, she said.
Straight's vice president of operations, Page Peary, couldn't be reached Tuesday, but said in an interview last week that in cases of self-defense, patients will be allowed to restrain one another. Said Groves of HRS: "This is one of those bottom-line issues that isn't negotiable. In any program there may be instances where a client could get physically involved with another client. However, I would expect to see that infrequently. I wouldn't expect to have reports or complaints coming out about those types of activities. "If that happens," he said, HRS again will "have to question the adequacy of Straight's program."
