Editor’s note: This commentary is by Margaret Crowley, the chairperson of the legislative committee for the Vermont State Employees Association.
[O]n Tuesday nightâ, February 7, VSEA members will be at the State House with nurses and workers belonging to other Vermont labor unions to testify to lawmakers about the difficulties workers sometimes experience when treating patients suffering with mental illness.
Recent VSEA public records requests found that since January 2015, Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital workers have filed roughly 11 patient-on-worker “incident” reports a month.
Thankfully, most of the incidents reported are deemed “minor” in nature, but some rise to the level of “moderate” and others even prompt employee visits to an emergency room.
Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital workers report being kicked, slapped, spit on, squeezed, scratched, bitten, pushed and punched. They have also had hot coffee and furniture thrown at them and had their clothing ripped. Some egregious incidents have led to a hospital trip for the worker, including a patient with Hepatitis C spitting into a worker’s face and some spit getting into the employee’s mouth, a patient hurling heavy furniture and injuring employees and patients closing their fists and punching employees in their faces, midsections, throats or other areas.
Frontline workers at the Vermont Veterans’ Home also sometimes treat residents who are experiencing acute mental-health crises, and, more often than not, it can be very challenging.
Things are slowly improving at the home now, after an August 2016 investigation of the facility by the Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration (VOSHA) determined that employee workplace protections were “deficient” and improvements were required. VOSHA fined the home $2,700, and, according to an August 2016 Bennington Banner story, also recommended that administrators “eliminate or materially reduce employees’ exposure to hazardous conditions associated with workplace violence.”
The Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration also directed administrators “to develop a written, comprehensive workplace violence program.” VSEA’s Vermont Veteran Home members will be updating lawmakers on what’s been implemented at the facility since August.
VSEA Department of Correction members will also be at the State House on February 7 to testify about their experiences dealing with incarcerated Vermonters who are suffering with mental illness. It’s no secret that a lack of hospital beds for Vermonters in acute mental health crisis has caused several of our state’s correctional facilities to see a marked increase in the number of inmates under supervision who have some form of mental illness.
Since 2007, Department of Correction workers have been testifying about the need for Vermont to build a specialized, forensic unit to house inmates with acute or severe mental illness, but to no avail. This leaves frontline DOC workers to do the best they can for inmates, but without the proper training required to know if what they are doing is right or wrong. It’s now widely accepted that prisons are not proper environments to care for mentally ill Vermonters, and VSEA’s DOC members agree that our current warehousing system must change.
And, of course, after the tragic 2015 killing of Social Worker Lara Sobel, VSEA’s Department for Children and Family members have been working tirelessly to convince lawmakers that more must be done to enhance frontline DCF workers’ safety on the job. The legislature responded in 2016 by passing S. 154, which increased penalties for assaults on any Department for Children and Family employee and introduced criminal penalties for certain types of threats. The bill is appreciated and it has helped, but more can be done, so VSEA Department for Children and Family members will be educating lawmakers about what is still needed. VSEA’s Probation and Parole members share some of the same concerns as the DCF workers, and they will be testifying as well.
With the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently announcing that it will soon be promulgating a new “workplace violence standard” to better address the issue, the timing could not be better for VSEA members to educate Vermont lawmakers about their experience with on-the-job violence and what kinds of improvements are needed.
VSEA believes that no employee should ever have to experience violence against them while at work, no matter the assailant’s mental state, which is why VSEA members are committed to helping Vermont officials and legislators develop and implement the nation’s most sweeping worker protections. Employee lives may depend on it.
