I recently read the Seven Days piece “The Loss of Grace,” by Joe Sexton. I was not only heartbroken but outraged and sickened to read the details of what was going on at Woodside Detention and the participation of the Vermont Department for Children and Families in this story.
It is sadly a very familiar story to me after working most of my life in human services. I worked for 28 years at COTS before retiring in 2015. What I heard throughout those years were countless stories from clients who had spent their youth in DCF custody, and most had been placed in multiple foster-care placements.
When children are removed from their family homes, they experience PTSD, so imagine what a child experiences after multiple (10-plus) placements. They start displaying aggressive behaviors, suicidal ideation, and hallucinations similar to war veterans. As young adults, they have attachment disorders, borderline and antisocial behaviors, which leads to homelessness, addictions, and criminal behaviors.
If one is truly concerned with these issues, well, it begins with caring for and protecting the most vulnerable children.
As to the practice for dispensing psychotropic drugs to children in foster care, research has described the prescribing of these drugs to children in foster care “too many, too much and too young and should never be a substitute for comprehensive psychosocial therapies due to limited resources.” (Please go to https://www.ncsc.org for more information.)
DCF services are broken here in Vermont and across much of the country and new, innovative models of care must be explored. I know for a fact that DCF caseworkers are committed, compassionate people with big caseloads and, like most human service workers, get little acknowledgement and low wages.
There needs to be more federal and state money for mental health and children’s protective services. We can’t sit back any longer and watch vulnerable children suffer.
Lucia Volino
Shelburne
