Whistles Blown Back and Forth in Agency Dispute

Social service worker Frances Guest attracted a lot of attention about a year ago when she went before the Little Hoover Commission and accused her supervisors of ignoring wretched conditions in many of the county’s board-and-care homes for the elderly.

The state watchdog agency issued a critical report based, in part, on Guest’s disclosures. But officials within the state Department of Social Service’s Community Care and Licensing Division denied that they had been lax.

Soon after her disclosures, social service officials transferred Guest from her job as an evaluator of board-and-care facilities and made her an inspector of children’s day-care centers.

She called the move harassment, but the officials said it was merely a routine personnel change.

A year later, the controversy over the move and Guest’s role as a whistle-blower continues to swirl.

Guest, 48, who was a board-and-care inspector for 12 years and is also a public-health nurse, is fighting disciplinary action taken against her in October, nearly a year after her testimony before the state Commission on Government Organization and Economy--otherwise known as the Little Hoover Commission.

Guest received a 1-week suspension and was demoted a grade, resulting in the loss of more than $1,250 a month in pay.

She has been accused of incompetence, insubordination, dishonesty and misuse of state property, among other things.

Specifically, her supervisors accuse Guest of leaving required daylong training sessions early on two occasions, missing a total of 4 hours.

She is also accused of overcharging the state by $22 on mileage expense reports and of making $51.10 in unauthorized personal telephone calls in December.

Officials also say she “embarrassed the department” by arriving at an administrative hearing too late to testify, according to the allegations contained in a legal brief from the Department of Social Services.

Guest has appealed the disciplinary actions to the state Personnel Board and last week testified in hearings before the board in Santa Ana. The board is still hearing evidence in the case and is not expected to issue a ruling for several months.

In an interview, Guest recalled that she was shocked upon learning that she would be punished.

“There had been no warning that these things were a question or a problem,” she said. “In state service, we are entitled to a system of progressive discipline, and nothing was ever said. It was a shock to think that to perform as competently as I could would result in something like that.”

Guest acknowledged making the phone calls--she contends that she did not realize

that they were long-distance calls--and said that the mileage computation was unintentional and that the missed training can be reasonably explained.

She alleged that she is being unfairly singled out and that the actions against her are petty and typical of the retaliation that began immediately after her public testimony.

It caused her such physical and emotional trauma, she said, that she was forced to go on disability leave in February.

Guest’s supervisor in the licensing division, John Grant, a witness in the Personnel Board hearings, said it would be “inappropriate” for him to respond to her allegations.

Kathleen Norris, a state Department of Social Services spokeswoman, also declined comment, citing the pending litigation.

In her testimony last year before the Little Hoover Commission, Guest said her supervisors criticized her for submitting too many reports of neglect and abuse of the elderly.

She also testified that the agency moved too slowly in closing homes with problems and removing mistreated patients. Guest said she was told not to use her medical training to evaluate injuries and suspected abuse, whereas before her public testimony she was often asked by her superiors to render medical assessments of patients.

“Because I constantly documented problem cases and consistently sought enforcement of regulations . . . I was frequently told that I generated too much activity . . . and that this activity caused embarrassment to the department,” Guest wrote in a subsequent report that she submitted to the state auditor general’s office in December.

Linda Dean, an ombudsman for the Orange County Council on Aging, described Guest last week as a thorough, precise person “who documents what she observes” and does her job well.

“She was in a unique position because she is also a nurse, and that caused her a lot of problems” with supervisors, who pressured her not to make medical judgments, Dean said.

Perhaps the most saddening aspect of events, Guest said, is that she has been branded a zealot and a fanatic for pointing out what she considered to be, in some cases, severe neglect of the elderly.

In one incident cited in her report to the auditor general, Guest saw an elderly man so weak he was unable to eat, stand or move himself. On a visit to the same facility 3 months earlier, Guest reported, the man had shown no signs of weakness.

Guest told the manager of the home to move the man to a hospital immediately but later found that he was not transferred for 3 subsequent days. The man died just hours after finally being admitted to a hospital for treatment.

Guest said that since her testimony before the Little Hoover Commission and a resulting report critical of care provided by board-and-care homes, abuse reports have increased.

“If nothing else, that has been a good effect,” she said of her ordeal. “I know I’m responsible for my actions and performance, and I’m very comfortable with that.

“I can stand by what I did, and I don’t know if others can do that.”