ST. ALBANS – The Dept. of Children and Families (DCF) announced Friday its residential stabilization program typically housed at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex will be moving from its temporary St. Albans location to Middlesex.
The announcement comes after two youth participating in DCF’s residential programming from Woodside had escaped the temporary St. Albans facility amid reports that DCF had security concerns regarding its ability to lock down the St. Albans site.
DCF removed its program from Woodside last month in order to allow the state’s Dept. of Mental Health to use the Essex facility to care for adult psychiatric patients who test positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel strain of coronavirus currently spreading through the U.S. and Vermont.
According to a DCF statement, the program will be moved on Monday to the Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence, which, unlike the facility in St. Albans, has locks on its doors and perimeter fencing, meaning the site was “hardware secure” as opposed to the “staff secure” status bestowed to DCF’s temporary St. Albans facility.
The site, according to DCF, will house up to five males between the ages of 13 and 18 who require residential care either due to behavioral and mental health concerns, juvenile delinquency placement or were in the custody of the state’s Dept. of Corrections.
Neither of the youth who escaped from the St. Albans facility were with Dept. of Corrections custody, according to testimony given by DCF commissioner Ken Schatz Tuesday before the Vermont House of Representatives’ Committee on Human Services.
At the time, Schatz said one was back in custody after DCF officials notified local police.
The escapes had raised security concerns for the St. Albans site, otherwise known as Suite 12, where, according to DCF, the site’s landlord was reportedly opposed to allowing alarms and locks on the facility’s windows and doors.
The Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence was vacated last month after the Dept. of Mental Health moved its residents to a unit within the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital in Berlin to accommodate for changing operational and staffing needs.
Woodside is the state’s only locked juvenile mental health facility.
The facility has seen increasingly less use in recent years as capacity for mental health services have expanded elsewhere in Vermont, leading state officials to propose the facility’s closure last year.
The facility has also come under greater public scrutiny after a federal judge sided with plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging officials’ use of physical restraint, isolation and other disciplinary measures at the Woodside center.
According to Schatz’s testimony, Woodside’s Essex campus would be ready to receive COVID-19 patients soon.