Vermont’s state employees union issued a scathing statement Wednesday alleging that Department for Children and Families staffers are facing “extremely dangerous situations” at work. The union demanded that the department quickly expand placement options for justice-involved youths in the child protection system.
Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, said DCF workers are being asked to perform duties beyond their responsibility or training and face potential violence from the kids in their care.
In an interview Wednesday, Howard also alleged that children sometimes wait hours in police stations — “chained to chairs” — while they wait for transport to a residential program or mental health facility. Howard said DCF employees who supervise these situations are referred to as “the sweet 16,” as there are 16 of them.
A DCF spokesperson did not immediately respond to these allegations Wednesday evening.
The union’s broadside came as DCF Commissioner Sean Brown was preparing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the placement of youths in state custody.
Department employees have been sent to supervise youths in police stations and emergency rooms, Brown said during his Wednesday testimony. Many residential programs do not take admissions outside of normal business hours, he said, which presents a challenge if a child is “picked up” at night or over the weekend.
Brown told the committee his department has various apartments where its staff take youths for overnight supervision if they are asked to leave foster placements or are awaiting placement in a residential program.
“We have agreements in place with law enforcement to staff them … in apartments we’ve secured in areas of the state until we can get them into court and then assess what’s the right program or placement for them longer term,” Brown said. “We ask our staff to be there with law enforcement to manage those youth as well.”
DCF employees previously supervised youths in state custody in hotel rooms when necessary. The state said it would stop the practice after a DCF employee reported she had been sexually assaulted in a St. Albans hotel while supervising a teen in custody in February 2021.
Seventy-one kids are in residential facilities in Vermont, Brown told the committee, at locations ranging from the Brattleboro Retreat to the Vermont School for Girls in Bennington. Additionally, 50 Vermont children have been placed in out-of-state facilities as far away as Florida, South Carolina and Colorado.
Brown said the department is working on several solutions to alleviate pressures on the system. It is working on a contract with a secure transport provider and hiring temporary staff. The department also is “in conversation” with a for-profit provider that would potentially add more inpatient mental health services and an unnamed provider that would “run a more secure program (in) the interim,” though the department is still locating a site.
Various stakeholders have suggested different ways to expand capacity long term. Howard has advocated for the state to immediately reopen a secure residential facility for youths to replace the Woodside Juvenile Detention Center in Essex, which the state closed in October 2020.
The state has faced lawsuits alleging abuse, dangerous conditions and improper use of restraints at the Essex facility.
The Scott administration cited dwindling use as one reason for shutting down the Essex facility, reporting that there were often just a few justice-involved youth at the site — or none at all.
Last year, Brown told legislators that justice-involved youth requiring a secure detention facility would be sent to the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, New Hampshire.
On Wednesday, Brown reminded senators that most kids who are waiting for placements are not involved in the justice system and would not be placed in a locked facility anyway. Most are “CHINS kids,” Brown said, using the acronym for children in need of care or supervision — a designation that encompasses children who were abused, abandoned, neglected or truant, and not in the juvenile justice system.
When they need DCF supervision in places like emergency departments or police stations, it’s often because of a mental health crisis, Brown said.
The state has been trying to open a privatized juvenile facility in Newbury but has faced strong pushback from the town. The local development review board recently denied the state a permit to open a six-bed residential treatment facility.
Some senators on the judiciary committee asked if DCF could repurpose the shuttered Southeast State Correctional Facility in Windsor, but Brown said there is similar local pushback to the idea. The Department of Buildings and General Services found that the former prison is in a state of disrepair, he said.
These challenges reflect a long-running trend. As the state seeks to “deinstitutionalize” and shift kids into community-based programs, they also face “more and more resistance” from wherever the state tries to build these facilities, Brown said.
In their presentation to the committee, DCF officials pointed out that most kids in state custody are not in institutionalized settings. As of September, 429 youth were in foster care, 352 were in “kinship care” with other family members and 128 were in residential care.
As of Oct. 1, 41 delinquent youth were in state custody, according to DCF’s presentation. This group comprises less than 4% of total youth in state custody.
