A youth facility in Tennessee that Vermont has been using since 2020 is abusive, unethical and unsanitary, according to recent findings of New Hampshire’s Office of the Child Advocate, which described “a culture of shame, humiliation, and inhumane punishment endemic to the program.”
The report prompted New Hampshire officials to remove two teenagers placed by that state with the Bledsoe Youth Academy and to decertify the facility, around the same time that Texas also stopped sending children there.
“Advocates walked away with an overwhelming feeling of concern for all kids in this program,” New Hampshire’s child advocate, Cassandra Sanchez, wrote in the initial report released in August.
Vermont’s contract with Bledsoe, described as treating “aggressive adolescent boys,” allows for up to four placements at the 30-bed treatment center that houses males between the ages of 12 and 17.
The facility, based in Gallatin, Tennessee, is one of 16 out-of-state residential placement sites that currently contracts with Vermont’s Department for Children and Families, collectively housing 47 youths out of a maximum capacity of 109.
Contrary to the New Hampshire findings, Vermont authorities — including a child placement specialist, Steven McLaughlin, who said he’s visited Bledsoe 22 times since February 2021 — said they found no issues there during an urgent visit in response to Sanchez’s report in August.
Only one Vermont youth is currently placed at Bledsoe, they said, and the same person was also there in July when Sanchez visited.
“The youth that we had there at that point still very much felt like it was the right program for them,” said Tyler Allen, DCF’s director of adolescent services.
But for Sanchez, she wrote in the report, her concerns were so pressing that she emailed New Hampshire’s Bureau of Children’s Behavioral Health from the facility’s parking lot after her visit.
Her report describes being met with a tall chain-link fence topped with chicken wire and a closed-circuit security system when she visited the site, which she described in an interview with VTDigger as one of her regular visits to placement facilities around the country.
In her report, Sanchez noted numerous issues at the facility including what she characterized as a lack of ethical treatment; an inadequate therapeutic environment and medical care; a culture of fear and humiliation; and unsanitary conditions. She outlined both verbal and physical harm, saying that youths had rug burns on their faces due to restraints used by staff.
Her office filed an abuse and neglect complaint with Tennessee Child Protection in July.
“The kids reported staff as the most difficult part of this placement,” Sanchez wrote. “They have heard staff say to other kids in the program ‘you are here because your uncle raped you’.”
She further described that adolescents staying at Bledsoe had to wear color-coded clothes indicating behavioral needs and/or punishment.
“These ‘uniforms’ are not only dehumanizing and institutional, but they also violate kid’s privacy by broadcasting to the community their personal struggles,” she wrote.
Since the report, the two New Hampshire teens placed at Bledsoe have returned to New Hampshire. The state will not send youths to the facility in the future and has removed the facility’s certification, Sanchez said in an interview.
The state of Texas has also withdrawn its placements. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services stopped sending teens to the facility in August, Marissa Gonzales, a spokesperson for the department, said in an email.
Gonzales did not point to the New Hampshire report as the impetus for pulling the adolescents, but said that “it was a decision made for the safety of our children based on a variety of information gathered.”
Neither Bledsoe Youth Academy nor its parent company, Youth Opportunity Investments, responded to VTDigger’s requests for comment this week.
Bledsoe as a last resort
Since the 2020 closure of Woodside, Vermont’s juvenile detention center, following abuse and neglect allegations, the state has struggled to find placements for youth, sometimes leading to juveniles being held in adult jails.
The Department for Children and Families uses out-of-state facilities to accommodate children with special needs that Vermont’s limited in-state placements do not offer, according to Allen.
“While we endeavor to keep as many kids in state as we can, there is a reality that kids, especially with higher needs, are sent out of state,” Allen said.
Out of the 47 children housed out of state, according to DCF, seven have been deemed “delinquent”, meaning they committed a “delinquent act” that is not part of the “Big 12” offenses but which would be considered a crime if committed by an adult. The rest are “children in need of care or supervision,” who may enter DCF custody for a variety of reasons, including abuse and neglect.
To house kids in Vermont, the department currently contracts for 157 licensed beds at in-state youth residential facilities, according to a report that the department submitted to the Vermont Legislature this week. However, just 107 beds — or 68% — are available for use due to ongoing staffing challenges, which were described as a huge barrier. (The figure includes Vermont Department of Mental Health placements.)
As of Nov. 17, the department counted 110 youths — both in and out of state — in residential care. That number is somewhat lower than the 123 youths housed in residential placements two years ago, when DCF said officials wanted to create more foster homes and reduce reliance on residential facilities.
According to Allen, Bledsoe has offered a home to youths that have been “historically difficult to place.”
He said that out-of-state placements are frequently visited by DCF staff, including McLaughlin, the child placement specialist.
“The kid we have in Tennessee has already been referred to every single program and they have denied that kid. They will not take him,” McLaughlin said in an interview. “We don’t want to send kids out that far. We want to keep them here. It’s always like that’s the last resort.”
McLaughlin said he learned about the New Hampshire report on Aug. 9. He grew so concerned about the claims that he visited the facility to check on the youth placed there 10 days later, but found no problems, he said.
Since he visits residential programs all the time, certain aspects that would shock other people, such as fences and chicken wire, are not as foreign to him, he said.
“When I first read the article, I was like, this seems like somebody who may be a guardian ad litem, or a role that doesn’t do what I do all the time,” McLaughlin said.
He described that when DCF first started using Bledsoe, the young person who Vermont had placed there was a “danger” and a “runner,” citing the fence and barbed wire as a way to keep him from trying to run away.
When McLaughlin arrived at Bledsoe in August, he spoke to the executive director and residential manager, among other staff, as well as the child who was placed at the facility. According to McLaughlin, the boy felt that Bledsoe was the one facility where he was treated with respect. His mother also cited no concerns about the placement, McLaughlin said.
After raising concerns in August, the New Hampshire Office of the Child Advocate released another report including not only Sanchez’s observations and interviews with the two New Hampshire youths, but also the experience of former Bledsoe staff members. McLaughlin said he wished the staff members would reach out to him about their concerns, but said that he has not received any calls.
McLaughlin noted that Bledsoe had been dealing with the water damage caused after a youth knocked out the facility’s sprinkler system, which has since been cleaned up and restored.
“They had a lot of things they needed to get back up to code,” McLaughlin said. “All my previous times they took great pride in how clean their program was,” he said.
According to Allen, DCF does not endorse residential settings with either physical or verbal abuse. However, he noted that physical restraint — which was a concern noted in the New Hampshire report — is not an uncommon practice, especially with youths who have a history of violence.
Following a recent investigation by ProPublica and WPLN that highlighted illegal seclusion of youths at a facility in Knoxville, lawmakers in Tennessee are calling for the auditing of all juvenile detention centers in the state. However, the Tennessee Department of Children Services said this does not include Bledsoe, even though it was described as “utilized as a juvenile detention center” in the New Hampshire report.
McLaughlin said that he has not encountered any Vermont teens at Bledsoe with rug burns, as the New Hampshire report noted. However, generally speaking, he said, injuries sometimes happen.
“We need to figure out something better. Kids should not be getting hurt on our watch,” he said.
“See the problem that that we are facing is we have no programs, like we have kids sitting in district offices being staffed by social workers who are not who are not skilled at residential treatment, you know, and were placing kids far, far away.”
A safe environment?
Sanchez told VTDigger she has thus far spoken with three former Bledsoe staff members who all said the facility was harmful to the youths staying there.
She said that a culture of fear persisted at Bledsoe, making youths fearful of speaking up, including the New Hampshire teens, who were initially afraid of speaking. She contended that the only way to get an accurate report is to bring youths off-site and not share any of their statements with the facility.
When asked about this, McLaughlin said that he usually tries to take teens out of facilities when talking with them. During his August visit to Bledsoe, he took the Vermont youth to Nashville, where they ate and went shopping together, he said. A hat they bought is sitting in McLaughlin’s office, waiting for the teen’s return to Vermont.
“I could see things, you know, with my eyes and know if a kid is saying things because they’re afraid, but I just never got that, probably because I take the kids off campus,” he said.
According to McLaughlin, the youth had no issues going to staff to “tell on other kids” and felt protected by the staff when he did.
“This is our sixth kid there. The previous five have all been successful,” McLaughlin said, noting that three went home after the program and the others went to less restrictive placements, with one of them now in college playing basketball.
“I can honestly tell you that if a kid told me, ‘I don’t feel safe here, I’m being bullied or I feel fear for my life,’ I’m leaving with that kid. Whether I have to purchase a plane ticket with my own credit card, I will do that, you know, and then we will figure it out, bring them back and we’ll figure it out,” McLaughlin said.
Vermont’s Office of the Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, first notified DCF of Sanchez’s report. According to Matthew Bernstein, the office’s director, his staff is still reviewing it.
“In general, our recommendations are that Vermont reduce the number of children going into any kind of congregate care, especially out-of-state congregate care,” Bernstein wrote in an email, noting that there should be a greater focus on prevention.
As of Dec. 6, there were 10 job openings listed at the Bledsoe facility, including the positions of facility administrator, assistant facility administrator, and operations manager.
“Even with a change in leadership, I’m still concerned about the children that are there,” Sanchez said. “The culture that’s ingrained in that facility is not something that will change overnight.”
According to McLaughlin, the bed at Bledsoe will soon be empty, as the young person is getting ready to leave in the next few weeks. After that, DCF will reassess whether Bledsoe is a good fit, although McLaughlin said that based on the success of the teens released from the facility, he does not have any hesitation to send someone there again.
“I think with the right kid, I gotta be honest, I don’t have any hesitation based on … what will be six kids that we’ve had there,” he said.
