Juvenile Services

Carroll County Juvenile Services received a $32,800 state grant to hire an addictions counselor to monitor 30 to 40 heroin-involved youths, officials said yesterday.The counselor will ensure that juvenile offenders receive intense daily supervision, participate in treatment, submit to drug tests, and receive immediate consequences for violating probation.The counselor will work closely with police and other agencies cooperating in the state's Heroin Action Plan, a program that includes monitoring drug trends, prevention, early intervention, education and ensuring safer schools.

Maryland Juvenile Services Secretary Linda D'Amario Rossi has agreed to take a similar position in Rhode Island, but she has not officially resigned from her post here, which complicates the search for her successor.Rhode Island Gov. Bruce Sundlun yesterday announced that he had offered Rossi her old job back, as director of Child and Family Services. However, because his offer includes a five-year contract and reinstatement in Rhode Island's pension plan, Rossi's appointment has to be approved by that state's legislature, a process that could take several weeks.

Since Linda D'Amario Rossi came to Maryland to run the Department of Juvenile Services less than four years ago, she has quietly pursued a controversial path -- contracting out programs to private companies.Under Rossi, the department has added eight such alternative programs, ranging from the community-based Choice in South Baltimore to Youth Challenge, a residential-but-unlocked camp in Charles County. They provide an array of services tailored to meet the increasingly diverse needs of Maryland's juveniles, from community-based treatment to residential psychiatric care.

It was a proud day, as Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. dedicated a new, much-needed juvenile detention center in Hagerstown with a speech and handshakes all around. Proud, that is, until somebody realized that a commemorative bookmark distributed to dozens of elected officials and other guests inadvertently contained the number for a telephone pornography line instead of the Department of Juvenile Services switchboard. "Call the talk line ... for exciting people nationwide," says a woman's recorded voice at the number that appears above the names, in stylized cursive, of Ehrlich, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele and Juvenile Services Secretary Kenneth C. Montague Jr. The recording directs callers to a second 800 number where jazzy music plays and men are invited to leave their credit card information and "go one-on-one with hot ... girls."

A union official sharply criticized the state Department of Juvenile Services yesterday for demoting 11 workers who collected overtime pay for training sessions they could not attend -- payments that were authorized by a supervisor who also was disciplined. Ron Bailey, executive director of American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Council 92, said the agency was "scapegoating" workers at the Cheltenham Youth Facility in Prince George's County for its management failures.

The director of detention for Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services resigned yesterday, saying he did not want news media attention focused on his role in a child abuse case in Montana to detract from the agency's work. Chris Perkins stepped down a day after acknowledging that he is the unnamed "Staff No. 2" mentioned in a redacted report that was issued in January 2006 by the Montana Department of Health and Human Services. The report, unsealed by a Montana court this week at the request of a Montana youth advocate, said that Perkins "directly abused or neglected youth under his care" while running a military-style academy for juvenile offenders.

ANNAPOLIS -- Juvenile Court judges can decide what kind of treatment a youthful offender should receive, but only the Department of Juvenile Services has the authority to decide where he gets it, the Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.The decision overturned court orders in three Baltimore cases to send juvenile offenders to a private reformatory in Pennsylvania, with Juvenile Services picking up the bill.Judges can recommend a type of treatment, the unanimous court decided. But it is the prerogative of state officials, charged with controlling their own budget, to decide which facility could best provide that treatment at a reasonable cost.

Nancy S. Grasmick, secretary of the Department of Juvenile Services, is taking over as state superintendent of schools.She replaces Joseph L. Shilling, who announced his resignation in May.Grasmick, who assumed the juvenile services post in January, will continue as special secretary for the Office of Children, Youth and Families, the state position that first lured her from the Baltimore County public school system two years ago.Mary Ann Saar, a law enforcement...

As a state legislator, Kenneth C. Montague Jr. earned a reputation as a passionate child advocate determined to bring reform to Maryland's troubled programs for juvenile offenders. Now he is the state Secretary of Juvenile Services, heading a department whose officials he once criticized for what he called a "tendency to try to protect themselves." He says he is still fighting for the same things he always did, but he has a decidedly different vantage point. The same advocates who cheered his appointment by Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. now question why the administration isn't doing more to improve conditions at the Cheltenham Youth Facility, the Charles H. Hickey School and other juvenile detention facilities.

Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to name a high-ranking Connecticut official as his secretary of juvenile services, sources familiar with the decision said yesterday, giving the agency a new leader as it grapples with a teenager's death at a privately run Carroll County residential facility regulated by the state. Donald W. Devore, Connecticut's juvenile justice director, has been identified as the top choice of the O'Malley administration to head the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, said the sources, who didn't want to be identified pending the official announcement.