RUTLAND – An advocacy group is moving ahead with a lawsuit that seeks to prohibit controversial restraint and seclusion practices at the state’s only juvenile detention facility.
Disability Rights Vermont will continue its case against the state Department for Children and Families, which operates the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, even as Gov. Phil Scott’s administration announced last week plans to call on the Legislature to close the facility, citing dwindling numbers of youth there.
Last month officials reported the 30-bed facility with a nearly $6 million budget in Essex had no youth being held there for the first time in its more than three-decade history.
In the meantime, Frank Reed, a former acting and deputy commissioner of the state Department of Mental Health, will be director of Woodside till March, according to a DCF attorney.
At a hearing Tuesday in federal court in Rutland, A.J. Ruben, a supervising attorney for Disability Rights Vermont, said that although the Scott administration may be calling for closing Woodside, there’s no guarantee it will occur.
The report of Woodside’s “demise,” Ruben told Judge Geoffrey Crawford, is premature.
Crawford agreed to set another hearing in the case in February to check the status of the proposed changes in policies and practices at Woodside, as well as legislative action regarding its possible closure.
In August, Crawford issued a scathing preliminary injunction against DCF called on Woodside officials to make sweeping changes to its policies and practices.
In its legal action filed earlier this year seeking the injunction, Disability Rights Vermont termed the physical restraint and seclusion policies and practices at the Woodside facility “dangerous” and “excessive.”
The nonprofit organization, which advocates for people with disabilities and mental health issues, sought to end those practices at Woodside.
In that decision, the judge called a video that he reviewed of a teen in Woodside’s care “horrific,” and “entirely inappropriate.” It showed a teenage girl naked and streaked with feces in restraint at the facility.
The Scott administration says it hopes to close Woodside by July, and doesn’t plan on including the $6 million needed to fund the facility in its budget for the next fiscal year.
On Tuesday, Mike Smith, the newly appointed secretary of the Agency of Human Services, detailed to lawmakers his decision to close the facility, noting that its population had been dwindling for years.
“When I first came here, the population was hovering between two and zero,” Smith told lawmakers on the Joint Justice Oversight Committee Tuesday. “So we were paying $6 million for a population that was two and zero.”
“Even if the population increased substantially, $6 million for that facility, from a financial point of view, made no sense,” Smith said.
After the meeting, committee chair Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, said that he supported closing Woodside, as long as the state can find capacity to house delinquent youth elsewhere.
“There needs to be some facility that can handle that delinquent population,” Sears said after the hearing Tuesday.
Judge Crawford questioned whether Woodside has the ability to be that facility. The incident captured in that video, he wrote, “demonstrates in the space of a few minutes Woodside’s limited ability to care for a child who is experiencing symptoms of serious mental illness.”
Ruben told the judge Tuesday the Vermont State Employees’ Association opposes the proposal to close Woodside. He also noted there’s no replacement plan in place, and the Legislature hasn’t weighed in yet.
The attorney added that while Woodside may have been empty for a short period last month, there are a handful of youth there now.
Assistant Attorney General Kate Gallagher, representing DCF at the hearing, said that the state is putting out a request for proposal as it seeks to provide care for youth should Woodside close.
“We’ll see what happens with that,” she said. “But, I don’t disagree that at this point Woodside remains open, and it remains open until the Legislature acts.”
The Legislature begins its session next month.
She asked the judge to allow the state to continue to work “collaboratively” with Disability Rights Vermont in making changes to its policies, including regarding restraint and seclusion of youth at the facility.
Ruben told the judge that his organization has agreed to some of the proposed changes by the state, but added, “There are still some pretty significant remaining issues.”
In filings submitted to the court ahead of the hearing, Gallagher wrote that Woodside has already made several changes at the facility in collaboration with Disability Rights Vermont, including a new intake and screening policy.
That policy, she wrote in a filing, is “developed for the purpose of ensuring that youth are not admitted to the facility if their medical condition is beyond the care Woodside can provide.”
Also, according to Gallagher, Woodside has a developed a “Clinical Crisis and Acute Psychiatric Response” policy “for the purpose of ensuring that youth who experience mental health crisis when already admitted to Woodside are transferred to appropriate care.”
The state and Disability Rights Vermont, Gallagher also wrote in the filing, is continuing to work on new policies regarding the restraint of youth and seclusion.
At the last hearing in the case in October, attorneys for the state also discussed organizational changes at Woodside, including the hiring of a clinician to take the helm of the facility.
Gallagher, in her filing, wrote that Woodside is holding off hiring for that position, adding that it would be difficult “to retain a Ph.D. level psychologist to act as the Director of Woodside given the potential for the facility to cease operations in the near future.”
As a result, she wrote, starting this week Frank Reed, a Department of Mental Health employee who is licensed as an independent clinical social worker with experience in mental health services, will serve as the director of Woodside.
He will continue in that position, according to Gallagher through March 16, as the parties await action by the Legislature regarding Woodside’s possible closure.
Also, a plan discussed at the last hearing in October to turn a section of Woodside which had been where youth in “isolation” it into a “therapeutic” space for counseling and family visiting has been on hold, court filings stated.
That $260,000 renovation of what is known as the North Unit at Woodside has also been delayed until March 16, as the parties awaiting legislative action.
Gallagher, in her filing, wrote, “the full renovation of the North Unit would seem to be an unnecessary expenditure if Woodside will not operational within the next year.”
Xander Landen contributed to this report.