Key contract documents appear to be missing in DDS guardianship arrangement
Key contract documents appear to be missing involving the procurement of a corporate guardian that has restricted the visitation rights of at least two clients of the Department of Developmental Services.
We have reviewed procurement documents involving TLC Trust, Inc., which has been under a 10-year contract with DDS since 2018 to provide guardianship services to DDS clients. Those documents raise several questions concerning the procurement process.
Neither DDS nor the state comptroller has produced or identified a Master Agreement between DDS and TLC Trust, despite a statement in a DDS guardianship bid solicitation in 2018 that qualified bidders would sign such an agreement.
The bid solicitation, known as a Request for Responses (RFR), also stated that a Procurement Management Team (PMT) would “evaluate proposals in detail and make recommendations for selection.” While DDS did provide the RFR and bid documents submitted in response to it by TLC Trust, DDS did not provide us with any documents reflecting an evaluation of TLC Trust’s bid, beyond a brief award determination.
We previously reported on family visitation restrictions affecting Naomy Alecia and Ryan Moran, two clients for whom TLC Trust has been serving as guardian. We have expressed concerns that those restrictions may be inconsistent with DDS regulations concerning visitation rights.
In December, we asked DDS in a public records request for all current contracts between DDS and TLC Trust. DDS provided only Page 1 of a 5-page Standard Contract Form with the nonprofit organization. That page contained no scope of services or terms and conditions for the provision of guardianship services.
We also asked DDS in January for all bid solicitations and evaluation documents relating to the selection of TLC Trust. As noted, DDS did not produce any evaluation documents.
Because DDS had produced only the first page of a Standard Contract Form, we filed a public records request with the state comptroller in February to find out whether the Comptroller’s Office might have the Master Agreement. On March 5, the Comptroller’s Office responded to our request, stating that it did not have any contractual documents between DDS and TLC Trust to provide guardianship services.
In reviewing the procurement materials that DDS did send us, we also noted the following:
- Of four resumes submitted by TLC Trust in response to the 2018 RFR, only one explicitly referenced guardianship activities, and one did not even reference TLC Trust. At the same time, TLC’s RFR submission stated that the organization had served as guardian to 65 individuals between 2012 and 2018.
- TLC’s RFR response stated that the organization “accompanies individuals for medical care.” In Ryan Moran’s case, his mother reported that TLC Trust has prohibited the family from attending medical appointments.
- The RFR stated that guardians receiving reimbursement under the contract must adhere to DDS’s Standards to Promote Dignity, which include provisions concerning visitation rights. As noted, the cases of Naomy Alecia and Ryan Moran have involved restrictions on family visitation that their families contend are inconsistent with those standards. This raises questions about how DDS monitors compliance with those requirements for guardians operating under the contract.
No answers to questions
On March 4, I emailed DDS Commissioner Sarah Peterson, asking the following questions:
1. Did DDS execute a Master Agreement with TLC Trust pursuant to the RFR? If so, where is that agreement kept?
2. Were detailed evaluation materials created of TLC Trust’s RFR submission? If so, can DDS confirm their existence?
3. Did DDS verify TLC Trust’s representation that it was serving as guardian to 65 individuals as of 2018?
4. Which TLC Trust employees have served as guardians of DDS clients since 2018, and what is the approximate client caseload per staff member?
5. How does DDS assess whether guardians receiving reimbursement under this contract are adhering to the Standards to Promote Dignity referenced in the RFR?
To date, I have not received a response from Peterson or the Department to my questions.
Lack of information raises further questions
A lack of answers and information from both DDS and TLC Trust only raises further questions and confusion about the organization’s role and qualifications.
In January, I emailed Gayle Greene, executive director of TLC Trust, and Diane Parker, who is listed as a case manager there. I noted that we were urging TLC Trust to ensure that their visitation policy conforms to the Department’s regulations, and we were asking that they re-examine and remove any visitation restrictions that have been placed on these two families. We believe these restrictions are causing stress and hardship to Naomy and Ryan and to their families.
I also asked how many DDS clients TLC Trust currently provides guardianship services for. We have reported that payments from DDS to TLC Trust from Fiscal Year 2022 through the current fiscal year have totaled $532,000. That averages out to close to $125,000 a year for the four full fiscal years from 2022 to 2025.
Both Greene and Parker are listed in court documents as performing guardianship services to Ryan Moran. Naomy’s mother, Lizvette Rivera, said Parker was providing guardianship services to Naomy. Neither Greene nor Parker responded to my January email query.
Despite the lack of mention of guardianship experience in most of the resumes submitted to DDS, TLC Trust stated in a one-page description of the organization’s history and qualifications that it started providing guardianship services to DDS clients in 2012, and was providing those services as of 2018 to 65 people. The one-page description added that:
Staffed by an Executive Director and three case managers (resumes attached), we consider ourselves “hands on” guardians. …DDS refers to TLC Trust on average between two and five new individuals per month for guardianship services. We have come to be known as an agency that will provide services to individuals who have dual diagnosis and whose situations could be described as “difficult”.
Given that only one of four resumes mentioned guardianship experience as of 2018, TLC Trust’s claim that it was providing those services to 65 people as of that year raises questions about the quality of those services and who was actually providing them.
We have urged DDS to investigate TLC Trust’s actions as guardian to Naomy and Ryan.
The RFR stated that DDS would reserve the right to remove any selected guardian if the guardian’s “conduct should fall below that expected of a fiduciary at the Department’s and the Court’s discretion.” In our view, in restricting family visitation, TLC Trust has displayed conduct that appears to fall below that expected of a fiduciary.
However, given that there is no complete contract that has been produced in this case, we don’t know whether such a contract contains a term similar to the RFR in which DDS reserves the same right to remove TLC Trust.
In an editorial today, The Boston Globe decried the state’s poor track record in responding promptly to public records requests, and in providing information to the public in general. As the Globe noted, “Well-managed public entities should certainly be able to respond to requests for information in a reasonable amount of time, at a reasonable, or no, cost.”
Unfortunately, there seems to be no better example, in our experience, of this disinterest in transparency in government than the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services.
COFAR blog 
What this case makes clear is that the procurement process was not about qualifications. It was about finding a guardian willing to enforce DDS and providers’ preferences, even when those preferences conflict with regulations and harm families. The missing contract is not an administrative oversight—it is a symptom of a system that prioritizes restricting families over protecting individuals. Until DDS is required to document, justify, and monitor these decisions, these harms will continue.
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