Aunt of teen who drowned is worried after Cleveland group home

CLEVELAND — The great-aunt of a teenager who drowned while in custody at a Cleveland group home said she worries for the safety of the teens living there after state investigators found a staff member waved a baton, threatened and shoved the child during an altercation inside group home in June.

According to a complaint filed with the Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services, the incident was captured on a cell phone camera. The agency charged Quality Care Residential Homes Inc. in non-compliance with state discipline rules.

Renise Bertz was outraged by the conclusions.

“You had a child that died because of your negligence,” Bertz said. “So that meant you had to walk a fine line.”

Bertz’s great-nephew, Shaud Howell, was placed in the care of Quality Care Residential Homes in July 2018.

Four days later, the 13-year-old boy died.

A state investigation found that a homeboy dropped off Howell and two other teenagers at Edgewater Beach and left them unattended for hours.

Howell’s body was pulled from Lake Erie two days later.

An autopsy revealed that the teenager, who was a poor swimmer and suffered from severe asthma, had drowned.

“I had to identify his body,” Bertz said. “How to pass it? No one talks about nightmares.”

A group home employee who drove teenagers was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment and sentenced to prison.

The court sentenced the former domestic worker to 3 years in prison for the death of a teenager from drowning on Edgewater Beach

The investigation found the group home violated several state regulations, including that staff repeatedly took residents to the beach to swim without permission, sometimes without staff supervision or supervision..

The group home of a teenager who drowned is the subject of several investigations

The state allowed Quality Care Residential Homes to remain open after administrators submitted plans to fix the violations.

But after Howell’s death, the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Families stopped sending foster children to residential care.

Drowned teenager’s group home has previous violations

But the News 5 Investigators found that changed less than four years later.

“It looks like Shaud got slapped again,” Bertz said. “It feels like a slap in the face.”

A county official said Quality Care Residential Homes “submitted a proposal along with dozens of other providers” and is now “among more than 80 out-of-home youth care providers in Cuyahoga County.”

Since March 2022, the county has paid the group more than $1.9 million for the house, records show.

Bertz said the county should be ashamed.

“How dare you pay someone $1.9 million?” she said. “It disgusts me. I just don’t understand. Shaud’s death must mean something.’

A Cuyahoga County spokesman declined to be interviewed on camera, hoping to learn more about why the county was once again sending foster children to a group home.

The county’s statement said, among other things, that Quality Care Residential Homes is licensed by the state and that the county’s Department of Child and Family Services conducts regular visits to monitor the facility’s safety.

But Bertz believes the pages of recent violations cited by the state tell the real story of what’s happening at home.

She questions why, despite what happened, the group home is still open.

“I don’t want another child to die like my nephew,” Bertz said, “because there was no reason for Schaud to die.”

Through their attorney, Quality Care Residential Homes administrators declined a request for an interview or statement for this story.

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