AUSTIN—The state agency that serves people with disabilities had 10 workers who should have been unemployable because of a history of abuse or neglect, according to an audit released Monday.

When the state auditor’s office reported the problem to the Department of Aging and Disability Services, those workers were fired.

The agency has since put in a new policy to check a database of employment problems on an annual basis, not just the point of hire, spokeswoman Laura Albrecht said.

The audit also reported that the agency investigates 99 percent of its top priority complaints within 24 hours, as required by law, but investigates low-level complaints within the required 14-day period only 41 percent of the time.

It also said state homes are not finding alternative living arrangements for most who request it.

Texas has 13 large institutions, called state schools or centers, in which nearly 5,000 mentally retarded or mentally ill residents live full-time with round-the-clock care. That’s about five times the national average for residents in large facilities.

From Sept. 1 2005 to Dec. 31, 2007, the agency investigated almost all of its top priority complaints and incidents of abuse and neglect within one day.

But the audit also found the 10 employees, including nine direct care workers, who were listed as “unemployable” in the Nurse Aide and Employee Misconduct Registries due to acts of abuse, neglect or exploitation.

Under old policy, that list was checked when a person applied for a job but not after they were hired. In these cases, Albrecht said, the workers’ names did not show up on the list until after their appeals process was exhausted and they were already working for the state.

The agency has about 11,000 employees, including more than 7,200 direct care staffers. None of the former employees were on the list because of abuse committed while working for the state, Albrecht said. About 51 percent of confirmed incidents involved neglect, 31 percent physical abuse and 16 percent emotional or verbal abuse. Less than 1 percent of the cases involved sexual abuse.