Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.
The House Human Services Committee wants officials in Gov. Phil Scott’s administration to rethink their approach to caring for youth in state custody — starting with renegotiating a contract that’s already on the books.
In January, officials in the state’s Department for Children and Families said they had inked a five-year deal worth $21.5 million with Pennsylvania-based Abraxas Youth and Family Services. The company will operate West River Haven, a three-bed temporary residential care facility in Brattleboro for youth ages 10-18.
The announcement drew concern from advocates, who pointed to Abraxas’ troubled history of abuse allegations. Pennsylvania officials revoked the operating license of one of the company’s facilities last November, citing “gross incompetence, negligence, and misconduct.” Earlier this month, four men filed suit in Pennsylvania court alleging they had been sexually assaulted at the same facility years earlier, PennLive reported.
In a majority-approved memo to colleagues at work on this year’s budget, the House Human Services Committee said the Legislature should require the administration to renegotiate the contract with Abraxas before authorizing funding for the project.
“It just sort of set off the alarm bells,” said Rep. Anne Donahue, I-Northfield, of the price tag on the contract. “What in the world?”
While the executive branch generally handles state contracts, lawmakers control the state budget. The Legislature could pass a budget without the Department for Children and Families’ desired requests, but it’s unclear what power the body has to require new terms with Abraxas specifically.
A request for proposals for the project had no takers when originally advertised, which for Donahue — the ranking member on Human Services — raised questions about whether the state had selected the right approach to the facility in the first place.
“If nobody feels they can provide the service until you finally get one at an extraordinary cost,” she said in an interview Thursday, “maybe trying to do a two- or three-bed program just is not a viable model.”
Donahue said the new facility’s cost worked out to roughly $4,000 per bed per day — whether the beds are full or not. By comparison, the Red Clover temporary care facility in Middlesex and the Retreat in Brattleboro each cost roughly $2,825 per bed per day, according to her memo.
Donahue added in the memo that nearly $600,000 of the requested $4.3 million budget for the program this year would go directly to “out-of-state administrative overhead,” citing Department for Children and Families estimates.
Donahue’s committee also asked the House’s budget writers to cut $288,000 from the state’s “high-end” youth care system. That’s the state’s network of out-of-home services for youth — such as West River Haven — including youngsters in the justice system, or who are experiencing crises stemming from mental health concerns or substance use issues.
The memo asked that the funding instead be redirected to prevention programs that the Scott administration had previously earmarked for cuts. The proposal would restore full funding for parenting education programs from Prevent Child Abuse Vermont, and also to post-adoption services for families carried out by a number of agencies.
The need to care for children in crisis could be reduced by continuing to invest in prevention, Donahue argued, which would ultimately decrease the need for spaces in costly programs like West River Haven.
For Matthew Bernstein, the state’s Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, lawmakers’ concerns seem well-founded.
For one thing, he said, “We don’t think the state of Vermont should contract with any company that has serious safety violations that have not been answered.”
Given Abraxas’ history of alleged issues, Bernstein doesn’t feel that Vermont officials have provided sufficient assurances that their Brattleboro facility is safe for children. The cost of those services is also a concern.
“These are taxpayer dollars paying for a very expensive program with a very concerning safety record,” Bernstein said. “We agree they should do it differently.”
Donahue said she and her colleagues feel in the dark about the state’s financial plans for its most vulnerable children. Despite years of requests, lawmakers have not received adequate projections for future costs in the “high-end” care system, Donahue said.
“It is a frightening prospect that the State is moving full-speed ahead and signing high-cost multiyear contracts, without a sense of future cost,” Donahue wrote in the committee’s memo.
In the committee’s memo, the suggested budget language also included a hold on further funding for the Green Mountain Youth Campus, a planned secure youth treatment facility intended to replace the scandal-plagued Woodside site that closed in 2020. Proposals to locate the new facility in Newbury and Vergennes have met backlash and legal action from neighbors and local government, leaving the project up in the air.
But until the Department for Children and Families has given the relevant committees a “complete, unambiguous written analysis” of the costs of the “high-end” care system over the next five years, Donahue’s colleagues don’t want to greenlight another cent for the Green Mountain Youth Campus project.
“How can we even make these decisions when you don’t give us the information we asked for?” Donahue said Thursday.
Asked for its reaction to the memo, the Department for Children and Families did not provide a comment before a Friday deadline.
