The personal experiences of the women behind
these allegations are sickening & heartbreaking

Mr. Wright and Mrs. Thurman-Wright provide two examples of Mr. Wright management style in a Foster Parent Support Group Training on a Facebook Live video recorded 08/31/2020. The topic of the training is "Parenting Myths: Rewards Wreck Responsibility." Mr. Wright's management style is likened to the grace foster parents need to have with foster children to focus on a foster child's emotional safety. While we don't know the full context of these employees' situations, this relaxed management style which puts employees at the mercy of Mr. Wright's "grace" and "kindness" is in line with experiences of former employees.

In this first video, Mrs. Thurman-Wright discusses being a single mom, working at Hope & Home, and not being able to spend a full work day in the office. Mr. Wright offered Mrs. Thurman-Wright kindness and understanding instead of a lecture or feedback. Mrs. Thurman-Wright describes this approach as motivating her to work harder and that Mr. Wright has offered this kindness to many employees over the years. 

while home supervisors had weeks or months where they were unable to reach Ms. Thurman (their supervisor) in the office, over the phone or email when they had to make critical decisions.


In this second clip, Mr. Wright describes a home supervisor gave permission to a foster parent for a procedure to be done with a foster child without caseworker or biological family approval. The decision was made out of frustration and anger despite the home supervisor knowing rule requirements. The caseworker, GAL and birth family found out and "all hell broke loose."

Afterwards, the home supervisor went to Mr. Wright, anticipating being put on corrective action. Mr. Wright responded, "I'm going to put you on something worse... I'm going to put you on double secret probation... it's kind of a joke... You're not on corrective action, you screwed up, but you know you screwed up and the consequence was pretty substantial... I don't need to add to your grief. You learned a harder way that anything I can do."

Mr. Wright describes his options for addressing this significant rights violation as

1. Utilizing natural consequences and continuing to "cheer on" this good home supervisor,
or 
2. "piling on" with the other professionals and "adding to [her] grief."

We'd like to suggest a third way, following a corrective action process gives the employee clear directions for addressing the issues that led to the violation and protects the employer in documenting how the issue is being addressed. Corrective action should be a collaborative process to resolve employee performance problems in order to retain the employee as a productive staff member (source) and is a common Human Resources tool.

In Mr. Wright's example, it would be addressing this employee making decisions out of frustration/anger, not consulting their supervisor and knowingly breaking rules. 

We now know that Ms. Thurman was in a relationship with Mr. Wright 

These videos highlight where Mr. Wright's method of running Hope & Home like a "family" business breaks down and creates room for significant harm to employees and the families they serve without the direction of an effective Human resources department

Note: These statements come from documents submitted to authorities. Turn your screen sideways or open on a computer for a better viewing experience.