Vermont’s defender general is suing the Department for Children and Families and the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, alleging staffers have used “dangerous” physical restraints on minors that aren’t consistent with nationally recognized techniques.
The defender general’s lawsuit seeks to require Woodside to stop using the “purposeful affliction of pain” during restraints, restraining children while they are face down and to adopt a nationally recognized approach for delivering restraints.
“We’re asking them to not do the things that are considered frankly illegal,” Vermont’s Defender General Matthew Valerio said in an interview Friday.
“You do not need to use pain control techniques, or sensory deprivation or isolation as punishments. It’s not consistent from what is used pretty much anywhere else in the country.”
The Colchester-based facility typically houses six to 16 youths between the ages 10 and 18, most of whom exhibit aggressive behavior and have intensive clinical needs.
The lawsuit against Woodside details an incident in March, and claims that staff members held a 17-year-old boy face down while they restrained his arms and legs and one staffer pushed a knee into his back.
The boy had been making “suicidal comments” that day, and before he was restrained had motioned as if he was trying to hit a staff member and he attempted to push through staff to get out of his cell, the lawsuit states.
But Paul Capcara, a registered nurse who the lawsuit cites as an expert in restraints, called the Woodside staff’s response “an unjustified and inappropriate response to suicidal ideation.”
“Restraining Juvenile #1 face down, with a knee on his back, so that he was unable to expand his chest cavity and breathe and talk normally, creates a highly unsafe situation which is the leading cause of death during restraints,” Capcara wrote in the filing.
He added that Woodside staff are not trained in “any recognized or certified restraint/de-escalation methodology.”
The filing states that the March incident isn’t isolated and that in 2018, Woodside staffers used “similar techniques” on four other children.
In a statement, Vermont’s Department for Children and Families, which runs the facility, said that staff at Woodside do everything they can to avoid physical restraints, but that sometimes they become necessary to protect staff and or youth in the program. The department noted that Woodside has not seen a serious injury stemming from a restraint in more than 10 years.
DCF said that it has been seeking to review its restraint practices and that next week, it is planning to receive consultation and “recommendations on de-escalation and restraint practices to ensure that Woodside continues to follow current research and best practices in these areas.”
“Because of all of these collaborative efforts, we were surprised by the filing of this lawsuit,” the statement says. “We intend to vigorously defend and correct the mischaracterizations and factual inaccuracies contained in the complaint.”
The department did not specify which details in the complaint were inaccurate or mischaracterized.
The lawsuit over the use of restraints at Woodside comes as the Legislature and the governor are mulling what to do with the facility, which DCF Commissioner Ken Schatz described to lawmakers in January as old, inefficient and “jail like.”
Schatz has advocated for building a new 30-bed facility so that the state can avoid sending youths out-of-state for residential care, as it does now.
But some are concerned with this plan, and say that the state could work with other residential treatment facilities in the state to treat some minors.
Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, and is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he planned on making reductions to the Woodside budget in the coming weeks.
The budget the House passed last month included just over $6 million to cover operating costs at Woodside next year. Sears said it doesn’t make sense to spend so much, on a facility that serves so few.
“We’re spending 6.1 million to house an average of 8 or 9 kids…when community-based programs can also provide those services,” Sears said.
Since 2016, Woodside has also stopped receiving federal Medicaid funding for the facility, meaning it is about $2.6 million more expensive for Vermont to operate than it was previously.
