The Department of Mental Health is gearing up to award a new contract for therapeutic group home services for children with emotional and behavioral challenges. As parents and members of the community have expressed concerns about major changes impacting children who have been receiving care, the acting director of the agency maintains any changes are in an effort to move forward. The agency expects to award a third request for proposal for therapeutic group home services by the week's end.


Acting director Dr. Andrea Sablan Leitheiser says the department has not yet received any bids in connection with the request for proposal. She admits parents of children in the therapeutic group home have expressed concerns about a change in services. She explained, "We've been very proactive and being very transparent with the parents, making them part of the process. And so we've been meeting weekly so some of those concerns that were brought forth, we did discuss them and we talked about possible solutions at the parent meetings."


Latte Treatment has been providing services for the last three years. While their contract expires at the end of this month, it may be likely that the department will have to fill in on an interim basis - something that parents like Mike Suzuki have expressed concerns about. "We just also need to be assured from Mental Health that they do find an outsourced company, because we don't want Mental Health to run the program completely...the concern pretty much is, is the quality of service going to be there? We have to wait."


But Dr. Leitheiser maintains the department's staff is trained to work with the kids in the group home. Some staffers even received training from Latte Treatment's Dr. Luis Valdez several years ago. "The department has no intention of a long-term taking care of the residential treatment facility for children, ours is a regulatory role," said Leitheiser.


As for concerns about one potential bidder, Illinois-based Associates in Clinical Psychology's Dr. Marc Zackheim, who was arrested and charged with practicing without a license and battery, but was later acquitted. The director speculated on the matter, telling KUAM News, "My thought is until we know if he's a bidder or not, it's a moot point. And I'm not going to go on a witch hunt unless I know someone's going to be a bidder, and then we will do everything to look into that."


Leitheiser has also requested information from her staff about who visited Zackheim's facilities last year. Zackheim previously told KUAM he paid for a portion of the travel for Mental Health officials to visit his group homes, something Public Auditor Doris Flores Brooks said at its face value appeared to be against the law. Leitheiser said, "We've already asked we're going to have people take a look at that just to see what all occurred, we never want to give the impression that we're breaking procurement law or we're doing anything inappropriate and that's definitely something I don't want on my watch."


The acting director maintains there's no bias towards any one particular potential bidder, whether Latte or Dr. Zackheim. She continued, "Are there a lot of success stories with Latte? Absolutely! Are there some concerns about Latte? Absolutely! But my thought is our concept in this department is to support our team and to move forward, so they're always going to be positives and challenges for everything. So I don't think its my role as director to bash vendors because we're all part of the same team and we're all dedicated together to improving Mental Health services not only for adults but for children."