Alex Hodgetts and his fellow employees at Vermont’s only juvenile detention facility were shocked when top officials unveiled their plans in November to close the center’s doors and contract out its services.
“It kind of left us all shook,” said Hodgetts, who has worked at Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex for 14 years, currently as a clinical care coordinator.
That news came about a week after reports that the 30-bed facility had no youth in its care for the first time since it opened more than three decades earlier.
It also came less than a year after the chief of the Department for Children and Families, which oversees Woodside, called on lawmakers to support a proposal to build a new $23.3 million state facility to provide more efficient and therapeutic space to serve youth. Woodside serves youth, ages 10 to 18, often in need of mental health treatment.
And employees at Woodside, who question the Scott administration’s effort to contract out the services offered there, are coming up with their own proposals. They say the state is better-positioned to take care of high-need youth.
The administration’s whiplash-inducing recommendations over whether to keep Woodside open, close it and contract out its services, or start over and construct something new, has prompted questions not only from employees, but lawmakers holding sway over what happens.
“I guess I’m a little confused,” Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, said to DCF Commissioner Ken Schatz, during a meeting this week of the House Human Services Committee.
“You know about a year ago, the administration was here recommending that we build a new facility,” said Wood, a committee member. “Just about 12 months later, you’re saying we don’t need that.”
Schatz, in response, acknowledged the relatively quick change of position, but added that it was based on the numbers. When he made the recommendation to fund building a new facility, he said, Woodside was averaging around 10 youths a day.
Then, Schatz said, starting in the spring, those numbers began to fall to less than a handful of youth there at a time.
The commissioner said the numbers also showed fewer youth adjudicated as delinquent coupled with expanded community-based programs to meet the needs.
“So all of that sort of taken together,” Schatz said, “led us, again very straightforwardly, to change our position to believe that actually we could provide appropriate supervision and care for these youth in community-based settings.”
However, he said, Vermont will still require a secure setting for a small number of youth – those displaying the most violent and aggressive behaviors.
Youth charged as adults can be sent by the state to the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland, which is an adult prison. Youth sent there must be separated from the adult population.
However, according to Schatz, that number is small and there will remain a need in Vermont for a secure setting for youth.
“We recognize that we need three to five secure beds,” he said.
Where exactly those beds will come from remains an open question.
Administration seeks to contract out Woodside services
Earlier this month, the administration sent out a request for proposals as it seeks to contract out the services that had been taking place at Woodside. Those bids are due back to the state Feb. 25.
According to the request for proposal schedule, the selection of the successful bidder is expected by March 5, with the contract set to go into effect May 1.
Specifically, according to the bidding documents, the state is seeking to “to establish contracts with one or more companies that can provide in-state (Vermont) short-term and/or long-term residential services and/or wrap-around community-based services for youth ages 13 through 18 that present that present with serious emotional, behavioral, and/or mental health needs.”
The administration’s announcement in November to shutter Woodside by this summer was immediately blasted by the Vermont State Employees’ Association.
The union represents roughly 50 workers at the facility, and contends contracting out the services will leave the state with little control in the future over how it deals with youth in need of a secure setting.
The decision to close the facility drew support in other quarters from those questioning the need for Woodside and its more than $6 million budget with so few youth going there. The facility has come under the microscope from critics who say the practices at Woodside are out of date.
The Vermont Defender General’s Office and Disability Rights Vermont have both sued Woodside and DCF in the past year, challenging Woodside’s use of physical restraints, as well as seclusion and isolation of youth at the facility.
In the Disabilities Rights Vermont suit, federal Judge Geoffrey Crawford issued a scathing ruling in ordering a preliminary injunction last summer. That ruling, in part, required DCF to update its policies to conform with national standards regarding the use of restraints.
Ultimately, whether to keep Woodside open or closed is, by statute, a decision for the Legislature.
In the meantime, the administration is moving ahead with the plan, which state officials expect will save more than $3 million.
Alternate proposals
The union and a group of Woodside employees have developed proposals of their own to keep the facility up-and-running, though in a scaled-down, lower budget mode. The proposals use the existing facility, with renovations, and call for state funding.
One proposal calls for a 16-bed “dual purpose” facility. The facility, with a $4 million budget, would provide a mix of secure and therapeutic care, split between separate sides of the building.
A second, cheaper plan calls for a 10-bed “short-term stabilization” facility with a $2.9 million pricetag with stays limited to 30 days.
“It’s not ideal,” Matt Messier, a teacher at Woodside who has worked there for more than 25 years, said of the proposals. “It’s barebones.”
The Woodside employees who worked with the union officials in coming up with their own facility proposals talked at length with VTDigger this week about their concern that privatization will mean less state control and oversight.
“The truth is, people in Montpelier have got to make up their mind,” said Tony Brice, a youth counselor who has been at Woodside for four years.
“One side of their mouth, they say they want to save money, on the other side what’s good for the kids is what matters,” Brice said. “The road they’re going, I don’t agree with that being the best route for kids.”
The employees also said training regarding new restraint practices has taken place at the facility in response to the court ruling last year and new protocols put in place to deal with youth in mental health crisis that involve seeking outside assistance when required.
With the low numbers in recent months, the Woodside workers said they have filled up their time training to meet some of the new standards in response to the court order and performing other tasks within the department, such as working with youth in community settings.
But, the workers said, they are also dealing with youth who at times can be difficult to control.
“We have a lot of residents that arrive and they’re really frustrated and angry and kick doors and kick walls and stuff like that,” Messier said. “It takes them a while to calm down.”
Messier added that the facility is a place of last resort for many youth, who have tried other programs in the community without success.
Brice, the youth counselor, said, “We actually build kids up here.”
He added, “You have former coaches, former teachers, people that have worked in corrections, that came here because they’d rather work with youth. We spend hours sitting and listening to these kids. We work with these kids.”
Nick Reuter, a youth counselor for five years at Woodside, said he believes that the state has an obligation to take care of youth in need.
“What it feels like to me is that they don’t want to invest in the future – Vermont’s youth,” he said. “They’re just trying to kind of push the problem away and save some money in the short term.”
The workers said when the report came last year that no youth were at Woodside, that lasted less than a day. Typically, they said, there are between three to five youths at the facility at a time.
They argue that number could increase if the state pursued the “dual purpose” option of a mix of up to 16 therapeutic and secure beds at the facility.
Schatz, speaking before the House committee this week, stood behind the effort by the administration to contract out the services.
“We do think that this proposal is the right way to go,” he said, adding that he was well aware of the employees’ and union’s position.
“I appreciate the fact that they oppose our recommendation and our proposal and I think that that’s fine,” Schatz said. “I’m very respectful of their opinions.”
Committee members at the meeting this week did ask DCF officials about how many youth in Vermont could be going to Woodside, but aren’t.
“On January 13, we had 26 youth in custody with a delinquency in state programs and we had 16 and out-of-state programs,” Leslie Wisdom, DCF general counsel, told the panel. “So that’s the universe of youth who could who could potentially go to Woodside but didn’t go to Woodside for various reasons.”
In Vermont, youth are required to be treated in the least restrictive setting possible.
Meanwhile, under the scaled-down proposals offered by the union and employees, more than half of the 50 workers could lose their jobs at Woodside.
However, several said while they most likely would have opportunities to seek other positions in state government should Woodside close, they questioned whether their skillsets and passion would translate to another post.
“It’s what I really want to do,” Reuter, the youth counselor, said of his job at Woodside.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Scott administration move to close Woodside prompts questions, alternate proposals.