Guest Post: Crossroads Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Crossroads and its principals have been much in the news recently and subject of a recent post here. Since Crossroads was not contacted in the recent post here, I offered them the chance to tell their story, themselves. That is the guest post from Alberta Crowley that follows. I’m also going to be clear that I know that Crossroads is doing incredible work with a population that is never well served — urban poor kids with mental health and addiction issues. They’ve certainly had their problems — with recent unethical behavior and with a long-running tug-of-war with the state over resources to serve these kids. I’m interested in helping these kids and the people who do — which is why I’m posting Crossroads story here.

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Mike Barbieri and I started Crossroads of Delaware in 1992. It was initially an adult program but quickly morphed into an adolescent program, given the significant need. By 2000 it had become our niche to treat the urban poor and I don’t think anyone would challenge this is a population we have served well. There was always an inherent risk in letting ourselves become pegged as an “inner city” program. We would, and did eventually lose our base of suburban, middle class, privately insured clients and become more dependent on Medicaid and State funding. Through all of this, we have been a fee for service provider, meaning we only got paid for services we provided after they were provided, much the same as Purchase of Care works. We did not get any grants or program funding (except for a one year trial of community based services in 2000). Throughout, we have been subject to multiple levels of audit.

In 2005, Mike was approached by some members of the state and county Democratic party and asked to run against Terry Spence for the 18th District Representative seat. Again, there was a risk to Crossroads. A campaign alone would take significant amounts of Mike’s time and mine since I was actively involved in helping his campaign. Mike lost in 2006, ran again in 2008 and won. Throughout all of this time campaigning Mike talked about being the owner of Crossroads and what Crossroads was. Party leaders vetted him and the Public Integrity Commission investigated whether he could own Crossroads and be a state legislator and he was obviously cleared to do so.

Mike’s legislative position created a number of challenges for Crossroads and for Mike and myself. He was immediately gone more often and I was thrust into managing the day to day activities. Because of obvious personality differences, I did this differently than Mike and was much more aggressive about getting kids into treatment, fighting the system to give these kids what they needed and a positive byproduct of my advocacy was that the agency grew. Because Mike was a legislator, and contrary to recent popular opinion, a quite ethical one, he basically removed himself from any legislative action that could even be perceived to benefit Crossroads. I could not even go to him with proposed legislation I was pushing for and had to find another legislator to sponsor it. Mike worked very hard, and quite frankly to the detriment of Crossroads, to not engage with the Kids Department in a way that looked like he was trying to assert legislative influence.

Between 2011 and 2012 two things happened that are being significantly distorted at this point. First, we had a review from the Kids Department that was less than favorable. While they made a big deal of “an undocumented rape allegation and no subsequent services”, that is not at all what happened. A girl came to treatment and during one session told a counselor that one of the boys in group had raped her two years prior. The counselor did follow up to make sure this had been reported to appropriate authorities and the girl had received clinical services to deal with it. The two were immediately placed into separate treatment programs. What the counselor didn’t do, was document this follow up. We acknowledged the mistake and did some retraining on documentation issues. Shortly after that, we submitted proposals for the upcoming contracts. The leadership of the Kids Department asked us and others to submit proposals for programs in Kent and Sussex Counties because they were such underserved areas. We did this and were given contracts to provide services in all three counties. We never knew, until the News Journal reported it, that our scores were lower than other agencies. However, these scores are quite subjective, and I definitely was not making friends with the people in charge of scoring.

In 2012, through late 2013, our program in Wilmington was quite large and the Kent/Sussex program was taking off nicely. My daughter had recently moved to Delaware and was working on her under graduate degree and I hired her as an office manager. When she finished her degree I moved her into a counseling position with the expectation she would finish her graduate degree, which she was in the process of doing. We had done the same thing with other staff before her and have always found real value in “growing” our own staff. I was actually having visions of my daughter some day taking over the program for me.

My daughter has a history, like myself and many others who work in this field. In less than a week I will have thirty years of recovery from alcoholism/addiction. My daughter had also had trouble with substance abuse, as have numerous family members. There was every reason to believe my daughter had been stable for years prior to the horrible situation that has led us to where we are. She was married to a wonderful man and they have two children. She was working on her degrees, participating in family, professional and social activities that were positive and appropriate. As far as her employment, she was not supervised by me directly and Mike had even less interaction with her. Her supervisor gave her very positive marks and none of us saw warning signs of relapse and associated dysfunction. In hindsight, I believe if I had interacted with her more I may have seen it, but at the time it seemed appropriate to keep myself removed from supervising her.

Shortly before accepting his new position Mike came to me and told me Rita had offered it to him and asked if I wanted to buy Crossroads. He was actually surprised at the offer but it was like a dream come true, not because of the $144,000 salary, but because of the opportunity to really help shape policy and put practices into place that would help the neediest in our communities. I was not surprised because 1) he had worked with Rita’s shop on a number of issues through his legislative career which gave her the opportunity to see his value, and 2) he clearly has the education, experience and passion to do the job. He began his new job on August 4th.

On August 14, 2015 my daughter told me she had been called in to the police station to be questioned regarding an inappropriate relationship with a teenage client. From my understanding, this had been anonymously reported. Although it was a Friday evening I immediately attempted to contact the detective but got voice mail. I called the mother of the boy who told me she was not worried about it and did not believe anything had happened. My daughter adamantly denied it. The boy denied it. We left for a family vacation the next morning. On Monday the 17th I called our contract manager at the Kids Department to report this investigation was going on and what steps I had taken thus far. Not too long after that the detective called me back and we talked for a while. He stated he had no evidence anything had happened but he believed something did. After talking to the detective, I confronted my daughter again and said tell me if something happened because I don’t want to find out through this investigation. She then admitted “something” had happened. I told her she needed to get a lawyer and quit talking to me. Now, I’m not going to lie. I took about ten minutes trying to figure out if there was any way around me reporting her; but there wasn’t, so I called. I disclosed that it was my daughter who was being accused even though that was an irrelevant point, because I did not want anyone to perceive I was hiding something. Most of the rest you have been reading in the paper.

As far as Mike, here is the history. He has had a long history of trying to help the mentally ill and addicted. We have never turned a client away for inability to pay and that has been Mike’s mantra at Crossroads. He goes to the extreme in trying to practice ethical principles and he has the highest level of integrity of anyone I know. And, yes, he is my friend. He has been there for me in the worst times of my life, including now. But, unlike most legislators I know, Mike tries to help everyone. I have witnessed him paying the electric bills for those unable to do so, he paid for a pregnant homeless woman to live in a hotel, he put a family of seven up in a rental property at his own expense and he paid part of a young lady’s college tuition that we worked with at Crossroads. And these are just the things he has done since this supposed boon in income. I say supposed because we also employed 36 people at the time and operated two facilities. The expenses increased at least at the same pace as the income.

Mike NEVER got a favor as a legislator. He has never let anyone even so much as buy him lunch. He has quietly gone to work in Legislative Hall and done his job. He has researched issues, actually listened to differing opinions and been willing to explain his rationale on issues. He has declined to go after numerous sources of income in the state for Crossroads because he was in a legislative position. He voted his conscience even when he knew it would make others angry. He has been unfailingly kind to those who work with him and for him and he has always treated others respectfully. People who matter know this.

I’ll admit I did not read the entire Delaware Liberal article about Mike because I have reached a point of total burnout on reading any of this stuff, about Mike and about Crossroads. But, I will say, if DL chooses to align itself with the people who are so ardently speaking out against Mike, you should really look at who you are aligning yourselves with. Mike would never treat any of you the way you treat him. I’ve become painfully aware there is very little loyalty in the world of politics and that is a shame, but for you all to print that piece without even trying to talk to Mike about his side says much more about you than it does him.

The story has grown legs as they say, and Crossroads will probably be forced to quit serving these kids we’ve dedicated ourselves to and loyal employees who have done nothing wrong will lose their jobs. But we won’t lose any sleep at night because of a guilty conscience. Yes, one of our employees seems to have done a terrible thing, and horrifyingly it’s my daughter. But if anyone had ever bothered to ask, they would see that she went through all the same procedures as any other employee. And like any employee, we did not follow her or monitor her actions in her off hours. And like any other agency, there were several layers of supervision between my daughter as a counselor and Mike as the CEO. In our entire existence we have not had an issue like this before, and when we did we took all appropriate courses of action. But, politics is a nasty business.