[T]he Vermont Department for Children and Families is asking the lawmakers crafting budget adjustment legislation to spend about $2.7 million to cover operating expenses at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, the state’s only corrections facility for youth.
The request comes after the department announced in October that it was giving up efforts to secure federal funding the Colchester facility lost in the fall of 2016 when federal agencies determined Woodside to be a juvenile justice facility ineligible for Medicaid treatment funds.
Typically, Woodside houses six to 16 youths between the ages 10 to 18, most of whom exhibit aggressive behavior and have intensive clinical needs.
Since 2016, the state had been trying to make staffing, legal and administrative changes to the Woodside facility so that it would meet the federal government’s criteria for a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility Provider — which would allow Vermont to continue receiving federal funding.
DCF’s commissioner Ken Schatz told the House Appropriations Committee Monday that the department had been “overly optimistic” in thinking that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would restore federal funding after the facility received certification as a psychiatric provider.
“They did not see Woodside as being anything other than a justice system involved program, and therefore ineligible for Medicaid funding,” he said, summarizing a meeting with CMS’s regional staff in Boston last year.
After hearing this, Schatz said he decided that the department “needed to move on.”
Without the federal funding, DCF is now asking legislators to fund the rest of its operating expenses for the year.
But in the long term, Schatz said the department hopes to work with lawmakers to build a new facility that offers better services for children and more flexibility for the state’s financial needs.
Although the facility usually serves fewer than 20 children at a time, Woodside employs a staff of 55 people and requires $6 million in funding each year.
DCF and all of Vermont’s departments and agencies are providing legislators with updates on their budget needs midway through the fiscal year, as lawmakers begin to consider the state’s budget adjustment package.
In total, Gov. Phil Scott’s administration has asked the Legislature to authorize about $9 million in additional spending authority across all of the state’s departments. Lawmakers will likely pass a budget adjustment bill in the coming weeks.
Clarification: This article has been revised to clarify that Vermont was making changes to Woodside with the hope of qualifying for certification as a psychiatric provider, not to meet juvenile justice standards.
