ESSEX – Vermont’s Dept. of Children and Families (DCF) and Disability Rights Vermont (DRVT) have settled a lawsuit brought last year by DRVT over conditions at the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Essex.
In a 28-page settlement announced Thursday, DCF agreed to continue working with DVRT to improve DCF’s policies at Woodside related to intake, screening and clinical crisis services, as well as protocols for emergency safety situations and de-escalation training.
The department also agreed to renovate its North Unit for staff offices and counseling space, and it guaranteed any director of the Woodside facility would be a doctorate-level psychologist or medical doctor with “substantial experience” in mental health treatment in secure facilities.
Those agreements depend on whether or not the Vermont legislature opts to close the Woodside facility, currently the only locked juvenile psychiatric facility in Vermont.
“We were very concerned about the treatment of the youth at Woodside when we started this litigation process, and we are very proud of the collaborative work that has been done and how well this settlement agreement has turned out,” DRVT’s executive director, Ed Paquin, said in a statement.
The initial suit, filed in June 2019, alleged Woodside’s restraint and isolation practices were “unconstitutional and unlawful,” citing several graphic instances where staff restrained and isolated children that inspired comparisons to prison-like conditions.
A federal judge previously sided with DRVT on the suit in August 2019, issuing a preliminary injunction that required DCF to change its policies regarding restraint, limit and improve its use of certain seclusion practices and address some of the deficiencies cited in DRVT’s initial suit.
Under the new settlement agreement, DCF has agreed to a review process for any emergency safety interventions at Woodside for the next 18 months and to review all de-escalation, restraint and seclusion practices every six months for the next 18 months.
“We are more confident now that youth in Woodside programming will receive the appropriate mental health services and care going forward, especially with the level of review that will be taking place over the next 18 months,” Paquin said.
In a statement, DCF commissioner Ken Schatz said he was proud of the work DCF had done to improve Woodside since the initial filing.
“We have done a lot of work on the programming and safety techniques at Woodside in collaboration with DRVT,” Schatz said. “We are very proud of the work that has been done and of our dedicated staff who have embraced these changes.”
DCF has also agreed to paying $60,000 in attorney fees to DRVT.
Last year, the administration of Gov. Phil Scott proposed closing the Woodside facility outright in light of a declining number of youth typically held at the facility and growing capacity for community-based care within Vermont.
Beyond youth with behavioral and mental health concerns, the Woodside program also houses youth with juvenile delinquency charges or youth in the custody of either DCF or the Vermont Dept. of Corrections.
The Woodside campus in Essex was recently vacated for use by the Dept. of Mental Health to house psychiatric patients who test positive for COVID-19, a highly contagious respiratory disease currently spreading through Vermont and the world at large.
Youth originally housed at Woodside are now being temporarily housed for DCF programming at a locked facility in Middlesex.