OPINION — Editorial

Ignorance in action

In memory of Christopher Gardner

The state's Department of Human Services has awakened to how inhumane some state-certified and state-financed services can be. The wake-up call came when a 5-year-old named Christopher Gardner, rest his soul, was left to die after being abandoned for eight hours aboard a hot van belonging to Ascent Acquisition Corp. of West Memphis. Or so say the police, though a final verdict should properly be left to the law, which still grinds slow but exceeding fine.

In the meantime, the gruesome details continue to emerge in this horror story outlined in the police report. Every box was checked, authorities say, but what good does that do if the whole procedure results in the death of an innocent? Everything was in order, according to the documentation that came complete with signatures on the dotted line attesting that the boy was taken inside the West Memphis child-care facility. Though he wasn't. Or as doctors are wont to say when something goes terribly wrong inside the operating room, the operation was a success, only the patient died.

Joe Baker, a captain with West Memphis' police department, says the 5-year-old was able to get out of his car seat, move to another seat across the aisle of the van, and even take off his shirt and one of his shoes. Forgive us for repeating all this distressing minutiae, but We the People are ultimately responsible for putting an outfit like Ascent Acquisition Corp. in charge of the least of these.

For now four employees of Ascent Acquisition Corp. have been charged with a felony, manslaughter, in connection with the boy's pitiable death, and have been released on $20,000 bonds, having already been fired by Ascent, though that's scarcely likely to bring Christoper Gardner back.

It would be even more appropriate if the state of Arkansas were to fire Ascent Acquisition Corp. All the state has done or maybe can do is put Ascent on probation for a year or so. So says David Griffin, who helps direct the licensing and accreditation operations of the state's Child Care and Early Childhood Education--a multi-syllabic title that sounds like an exercise in irony now, thanks to the death of a once living, breathing child named Christopher Gardner.

Let the record note that Ascent also runs centers in Jonesboro, Blytheville, Paragould and Trumann and sub-contracts transportation with Southeastrans, which has already taken the appropriate action in this case: It's canceled its contracts with Ascent as of the end of June.

Ascent's CEO is Dan Sullivan, and he's already issuing press releases:

"We are going to transition transportation services for our clients to local Medicaid transport providers," CEO Sullivan says in fluent bureaucratese, a language not to be confused with plain English or plain dealing. "We will work to make this transition as seamless as possible for our clients as we continue in our efforts to meet their needs and provide the quality services they require." Exactly what quality services? The kind Christopher Gardner got?

He says his staff "did not follow company policies and procedures, and if they had, this tragedy would not have occurred." Tragedy is another over-used term on these occasions, with its connotations of inevitability--except that Christopher Gardner's harrowing death was not inevitable but all too preventable.

Where will it all end? Alas, it may not end at all as the next generation of managers learns from this horrendous event only how to make unacceptable excuses, not real progress. The moral of this story? Stay alert for the kind of management that's hard to distinguish from disaster. For that's what the death of a child is for his family and for all of us. For anyone who snuffs out the life of a child has destroyed not just that one life but all that life might have meant to the rest of us.

Editorial on 06/27/2017

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