Audit - Caring program lacks accountability

A state program designed to provide money and services to needy communities lacks ways to measure results against costs, a new audit said.

State Auditor Claire McCaskill's office said in an audit Missouri's Caring Community Program is hampered by poor planning and reporting, funding problems and questionable expenditures.

But the director of Cape Girardeau Caring Communities -- one of 21 such programs in the state --said the local program is well run. Chrissy Warren, director of Cape Girardeau Caring Communities, said her program is audited by a private accounting firm.

"Here in Cape, we do extensive reporting," she said.

Warren said the audit looked only at the Caring Communities programs in the St. Louis and Kansas City areas and Boone and Phelps counties.

The statewide program created by executive order in 1993 involves partnerships with neighborhoods, local businesses and state agencies. Its goals include ensuring that families are safe and healthy in their communities.

Locally, the program provides counseling and after-school tutoring for students in the Cape Girardeau School District as well as parent education.

As part of the program, Southeast Missouri State University students volunteer their time as tutors in the school system. Two state social workers also work with students in the Cape Girardeau public schools.

Needs improvement

McCaskill said Tuesday in releasing the audit that the program statewide is a good idea that needs to be improved upon in order to achieve the best results.

"It's a sound idea," McCaskill said at a news conference. "Unfortunately, that idea has not come to fruition as it should have, mostly because of failure to make the program accountable." The community partnerships statewide have a $24.8 million budget for the fiscal year that began in July.

Locally, Warren directs the Cape Girardeau partnership from an office in the former vocational-technical school.

She is one of five people who work for the partnership through the Cape Girardeau School District. Another three people in the partnership are employed through Southeast Missouri State University.

The local program receives $508,000 in funding from the state. The money pays the salaries of the university and school district employees in the program.

With in-kind donations such as school-donated office space, the budget for Cape Girardeau Caring Communities tops $1 million, Warren said.

"Program officials charged with the responsibility of overseeing the Caring Communities program have not been successful in implementing one of the cornerstones of the program -- assuring accountability," the audit said.

The audit found there was not enough data for officials to identify community problems that were worth addressing. Yet several local partnerships spent money on problems that were not substantiated, the audit said.

"If steps are not taken to address these areas there can be no assurance that program funding will be spent in the right areas and that program goals will be met," the audit said.

Department directors of several state agencies involved in the program said many of the concerns in the audit will be addressed. Those agencies include social services, mental health, education, economic development, corrections, labor and public safety.

"As noted frequently throughout the audit, implementation of the Caring Communities concept is an evolutionary process; one that continually demands introspect and transformation," the directors said in their response.

Spending questions

The audit also raised questions about spending within the program.

For example, a $300,000 conference at the Lake of the Ozarks included meals, lodging and entertainment for some family members not directly involved in the Caring Communities program.

Warren said the Cape Girardeau program sent 20 people to the conference. They included members of the staff and the board of directors, and neighborhood volunteers.

Warren said she and others who went to the conference were free to take family members provided they paid for them out of their own pockets.

Nina Thompson, a spokeswoman for the board that oversees the Caring Communities program in Missouri, said she has no evidence that public money paid the expenses of any family members at the conference.

The audit also found that program officials paid $400,295 in tuition costs for a graduate certificate program benefiting St. Louis area personnel.

Of the 51 participants, just 33 were involved in the Caring Communities programs.

Warren said no one from the Cape Girardeau office was involved in the certificate program.

Thompson said she wasn't alarmed by the audit. "I didn't think it was that bad," she said.

Southeast Missourian Staff writer Mark Bliss contributed to this report.