 Thank you and good afternoon everybody. This is the Vermont State Senate Committee on Institutions. Today is January 13, 2022. I am your host for today's events. The chair of this committee, Joe Benning, I represent the Caledonia Orange District, which is all of Caledonia County and the sixth northeastern most towns in Orange County. Present with us today is a full committee, Senator Mazza from Colchester Grand Isle, Senator Parrot from Franklin County, Senator McDonald from Windsor County, and Senator Ingalls from Essex or Leeds. The topic of our discussion is a spillover from yesterday where we were hearing from various residents of the town of Newbury with respect to a proposal that is before that town. I just want to remind everybody again that we understand that this happens to be in the midst of litigation. I've presented an opportunity for folks to come and tell us what they feel about the institution that has been proposed. But we're not going to get into a conversation about the litigation itself. We have to leave that for the courts to deal with. Again, as we go through testimony just to remind folks we are on YouTube, where anybody can be listening in at any point in time, I ask people to try to keep their comments as low level as possible so that if you're using some terminology that folks might not understand I may interrupt your testimony and ask you to explain what that is. I think that all that my understanding for the committee is that we have two citizen witnesses left there was a third that was listed but he will not be testifying today. And then we're going to shift the conversation a little bit out of the town of Newbury and have a more general conversation. So for today's purposes, I have. Yes, as a point of order before before I saw I apologize for interrupting as a point of order. I'm aware that all Celtic names sound the same, but I am actually Senator McCormack, not McDonald's. I apologize for that and I'll tell you exactly why that happened. I was this morning at eight o'clock on with Senator McDonald in Elkar. And I think my brain is still stuck on the Elkar committee meeting this morning so I will add. Let's not vote on that issue. I will add that Senator McCormack took that better than I was. One Scotsman, another Scotsman, who knows. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no Irish. Yes. Now I'll take offense. Getting back to our schedule. Yeah, Jetta Mandel Abram said you are a citizen of the town of Newbury you were here with us yesterday. I apologize to both you and Tristan for not being able to get you in. But the floor is officially yours. Thank you so much for allowing me to speak today senators I really appreciate the opportunity. I just want to give you some background information I guess on on who we are my name is Jetta Mandel Abramson, my husband is claudel sherry. We are a black and woman owned regenerative agriculture saffron farm. Our property is 51 acres we have a budding well road frontage on both Stevens place and fish pond road. So we are essentially the gatekeepers to the Stevens place property the Beckett property, which does mean that we see the goings on every day of folks coming in and coming out. And will be directly impacted by this proposed facility on a number of different sort of aspects I guess we, we are an S corporation which does mean that we have shareholders were privately owned. We have, we know of course not traded on an open market where we're privately traded company. We did this so that we would be able to provide economic opportunity to underserved populations, mostly the black community of, you know that that we live with my husband is Haitian and an immigrant and we have a lot of shareholders who are who are Haitian. And a lot of other black American shareholders as well as women and queer folk. So we are, you know, an environmentally responsible farm, and we are also a socially responsible farm we're trying to to bridge the economic gaps in a lot of different ways here for folks underserved and underprivileged communities. Basically, as a saffron farm I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with saffron but it's incredibly labor intensive. There's no way to mechanize the the harvesting or processing of saffron, although there are ways to recognize mechanize the planting of saffron no way to actually do that mechanically to harvest or process so we do this all by hand it takes a hundred and 75 flowers. We have a lot of saffron and every flower that blooms in our field has to be picked that day it's only viable for one day. It also then has to be processed that day. So when we're in full production on our farm, which we do plan on expanding we're currently one acre but we'd like to be able to put in maybe up to 10 acres of saffron on our farm. We currently have about 10 to 15 employees per day working 1618 hour days during our harvest season, which is a lot of employees. You know that's just for one acre so we have a goal to be socially responsible and that goal is to put cabins throughout our property so that our employees can live while we're harvesting, which is only one month a year, but they can live here for free without having to to go, you know, find housing elsewhere or you know, have to worry about taking the money that they're earning on our farm and spending it on things like housing or electricity or food even you know part of our plan is to be able to provide them with all of these basic needs while they're here working on our farm. And in this sort of vein of, you know, having these beautiful cabins for our employees of course, you know we only need employees just a few months out of the year so for the rest of that time we of course will be, you know, air being being them or, you know, doing some sort of rental for these for these cabins so that people can do, you know, farm stays and learn about regenerative agriculture and perhaps, you know, take culinary classes or, you know, have retreat spaces for, you know, whatever whoever wants to rent out our beautiful little agro tourism space that we have on our farm, which of course is all in line with CD 10 zoning, which is where we live. You know, we are conservation district and that's exactly what we're trying to do here. You know, conserve the land use the land but also give back as much if not more than we take from it so that we are actively restoring our environment. So, basically, most of our employees are thus far black and it has been brought to our attention that, you know, these people don't won't come back to work for us if there is, you know, this proposed juvenile detention facility up behind our house. It's, it has created a lot of fear in our employees, which, you know, is really detrimental to our business because we need so many people working while we are harvesting saffron and, you know, there, there just aren't that many people around here to actually do the work that we need done. It's been really difficult for us to find local folks to actually want to come in for a month or two, and just, you know, put their nose to the grindstone and really dig in. So we, it's been really important for us to be able to bring in people that a need the economic help, but also, you know, that are willing to spend the couple of months here to really help us do what we need to do, which is harvest and process saffron. So, you know, it's for us to not have access to that employee base is, is, it's going to put us out of business I mean we're not going to be able to harvest or process saffron. This is my husband, Claudel. You know, we're not going to have the people that we need in order to actually really continue our business if, if we have, if we're dealing with essentially, you know, a maximum security juvenile detention facility behind our house. Mostly because of the added police presence of course and and you know that sort of brings us to to a main point that we kind of touched on yesterday. What I'm going to sort of get into a little bit deeper here is that you know the resources in Newbury are essentially non existent as far as a police presence goes we have a constable who is extraordinarily part time and I mean I don't actually have dogs I'll just say this very quickly I have dogs and occasionally they will go adventure out and I need to call the constable who is also the animal control officer and you know, there have been times where it's taken him two days to get back to me about who I found you know or came home so it wasn't a problem but still like that's just a small personal example of, of the, the reality of having a part time constable in your town. You know that being said of course there, we do have the state troopers but their response time is anywhere from depending on where they are of course is anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half so you know it's very unreliable. I'd also like to bring up the point that you know there's aspects of having an additional police force make us really uncomfortable of course because we are black and women don't farm so I'm sure all of you are aware of the, you know the tumultuous relationships between law enforcement and the black community of this country I mean there's no hiding it, and this is a reality so this is something that makes us really uncomfortable, having you know, a police force that perhaps in the unlikely event that a child of youth escapes this facility you know we have the potential to be, you know, police officers have will be searching through our woods and like God forbid, they come across one of our employees in the woods and, and get freaked out and I mean what if something happens to one of our employees, because there's an escaped youth from this facility behind our house I mean it's honestly it is a terrifying vision and something that we really would just of course love to avoid in the first place. You know, I'll jump in here for a second. One of the obstacles in front of us is that this planned proposal came through our committee, at least a year ago now, and went through with an understanding. It took the power to call it back and bring it back to prior to the time it was actually proposed. I'm assuming everything that you're saying here has been presented at the town level. When the development review board was discussing this, am I safe in that assumption. Yes. Okay. I'm trying to channel the afternoon's conversation to make sure we hear people. And believe me I understand the irony that you guys are pitching this to a committee of five white guys. I was going to say all old white guys but Corey's still thinking he's young. The upshot though is that we've only got limited capacity at this point in time. I wanted to say yesterday, the fact that it's in litigation sort of puts us in a minefield because once we attempt to try to manipulate that in any way shape or form we are way out of line with what our responsibilities are. So, I don't want to cut you off necessarily but I do want to say that if there's anything you can tell us about what we did that you would have preferred we didn't do and I think you've already done a lot of that so far. But I'm trying to allow for an expression of concern and then move forward from there because we do have limited power to affect what has been done. I just wanted to try to channel this discussion somehow and I do understand again we have limited time to work in this afternoon. So I'm not sure how you're feeling about everything I've just said I don't want you to come away feeling like you got cut off and thrown out the door. You know, I totally I totally understand where you're coming from. I will just add just a couple of more remarks. I had a phone conversation with Anson Tibbets, Monica Hut, Judy and Jennifer Micah in July. And, you know, to express a lot of what I just expressed to you. And, you know, in that conversation it was very interesting because I think it was Jennifer Micah although it was a long time ago and of course this was over the telephone so I wasn't visually having eyes on them. And so Jennifer Micah that said something along the lines that, you know, they had committed to six beds at the Newbury facility with zero expansion, and she kind of laughed and said that, you know, this, she almost didn't even know why they were going through with the first place because six beds wasn't going to be a significant enough facility for the future so, you know, I have that conversation, you know, recorded and I would be happy to share it. I don't know if that was if anybody was interested in that but it you know it was it was one of those points where it was like well if this if a six bed facility which you've committed to and you're promising you're not going to go over is going to be too in all of this facility for, you know, the the long term which might even just be two to five years from now. It seems pretty significant that you know maybe investing, you know, three and a half million taxpayer dollars into this bed and breakfast will never be a bed and breakfast again. After these renovations are done to it or or even a family residence ever again, you know, it would seem that there would be a better allocation for for taxpayer funds. I'll also just add very quickly and then I'll be done that, you know, something which was brought up yesterday. During the first town meeting informational meeting for Newberry, Jay Walter did say, you know, we've never had the opportunity frankly of having a secure program. And said shortly after that I haven't worked on a project like this in any other state. And then during the act to 50 hearing the architects testify that they have never designed a security facility which you know does lead us back to those concerns of safety and and security in the DRB hearing also when security was brought up. The town has, you know, we still have not yet seen a plan for their security system that they've promised us. And Beckett's compliance officer Laura Saffro said during her answer that what we think is unique about our plan is we've added this response team and you know part of the design kind of came from fishing game, like the team had the search and rescue teams where they trained a number of people so they did search and rescue, they could call upon that to bolster fish and game. Along that same idea, having that team in the event of something unusual, we would be able to respond with extra people to do the search. And, you know, I, I'm going to just say that that is really scary for us. We have lived on this road for five years now. And within the first two years, a neighbor way down the road had, you know, a bunch of signs up posted on a tree there was a Black Lives Matter sign, a LGBTQ sign. And that Black Lives Matter sign since we've lived on this road has been ripped down twice. So to have, you know, a civilian team put together to go and search for escaped youth, walking through our property, perhaps armed is just beyond. It's just beyond. It's scary. And with that, I thank you all very much for, you know, listening to all of us speak and, you know, especially for hearing our side of the story today. It's, it means a lot and I really appreciate it. So thank you all very much. Thanks for coming to institutions and best of luck in your farm expansion. Tristan, I'm coming to you. The topic is well known. You've sat patiently through all day yesterday and today. And I think you know the ground rules of what we've got for kind of jurisdictional walls surrounding us, but the floor is yours, sir. Thank you. I don't know if anybody else is having problems hearing you right now, but I'm having problems hearing you. Is this better? That's better. Okay. Thank you and I. We went out again. This better. It seems to be when you turn your head to your left that your sound goes out. I don't know what that means. But right now I can hear you. I think I've fixed that. I understand the ground rules and I, I hope that I'm able to just provide some facts and information. So, good afternoon. My name is Tristan Escalada. My wife, child and I are budding landowners to the Beckett property in Newbury. Thank you for inviting us to speak on this issue. I am a co-founder and principal engineer of a technology company deploying our own state of the art wireless mesh communication systems in challenging rural environments in over 25 countries. So I can offer a bit of an expert opinion on what Laura Safo from Beckett describes as their state of the art learning system. They'll be used to notify residents of an eventual escape of a dangerous youth from the proposed facility. This problem is a system of the brick and mortar facility. So I believe that it is relevant to this community. As mentioned before, the lack of cellular service, dense forest and mountainous terrain that this building sits on makes it a particularly difficult problem to solve. In response to the concerns raised at the DRB hearings about this particularly unsuitable location for the facility regarding these issues, the solution proposed in the end for the alerting system is that Laura Safo will drive around people's houses and let them know that a potentially dangerous criminal offender has escaped. Like many Newbury residents, I spend a lot of time on my land out on the trails instead of in my cabin. So it could take a while for her to find me on my land. I calculated that if it takes 45 minutes for her to find me, then by that time an untrained running 17 year old who has escaped could have run to any property in Newbury. And I picked 45 minutes for my analysis because as was discussed yesterday, that's how long it may take emergency services to arrive at this facility from the closest staff police barracks. I'm happy to provide the committee with all of the data studies and analysis to back up these facts. So, while someone is driving around looking for residents one by one, and the police are driving to Newbury, the escapee could literally be anywhere in Newbury for the residents that do have cell service. They have been notified remotely of the escape. The town will be on high alert looking for any kid that they don't recognize during this time when we as residents are on our own without the support of emergency services. This will be a very dangerous time for my child, all the children of Newbury, and the person who escaped. I believe because of the lack of cell service. Anytime my child is on his own land outside of cell range will actually be a dangerous time. I currently allow hikers, ATVers and hunters on my land. If this prison is built. Anytime they see my son outside of cell range, they will need to navigate the situation of whether or not my child is an escaped dangerous prisoner or not. I hope that every time this scenario resolves itself with the assumption that someone is not currently driving up the mile long driveway to warn them that there has been an escape. That's a coin I never thought I would need to constantly flip when I bought my land in this quiet rural conservation district. Speaking of my land, I would be happy to invite everyone on this committee to come visit my 100 acres of dense forest about in the proposed facility. I would love for the members of this committee to have a chance to see firsthand the beautiful land challenging hiking and ATV trails and wildlife that are DRB zoning laws and citizens have created and maintained for hundreds of years by following our own town plan. I will be honest though, I'm sorry for jumping around. As an engineer, my job is not to look at a problem and say it's insurmountable. So, when I look at the challenges facing the Newbury facility, I do see solutions. However, the solutions I see will take years to develop, deploy, and many, many millions of dollars of investment above the current proposal. The simpler solution of course is to put the facility in a location with emergency services, cell phone coverage, and a much more forgiving terrain surrounding the facility. Perhaps even a location zone for such facility to avoid the community rejection, as was seen here by the unanimous rejection by the DRB and the 93% rejection in the townwide survey. I appreciate a good challenge, but sometimes the best use of time and resources is to step back and reassess the problem. How do we put a facility in Newbury is the question that has been met with constant opposition, delays, problems, rejection, revision after revision to the plan, and unknown final cost. If I were the engineer working on this project, I would ask the question at this point, given what we know now, what are the requirements for a facility location, and then where in Vermont best meets those requirements. What we have learned here is that there are more requirements for the placement of this facility than had been previously realized two years ago when the Newbury site was chosen. Here is my site selection criteria requirements, given all that has been learned from the Newbury proceedings. Proper zoning, adequate emergency services, so that's police, EMS, fire, and adequate infrastructure, roads, internet, water, and cell service. These are the requirements, which the site either outright fails to satisfy like zoning or makes it prohibitively costly to satisfy. These requirements must be documented and used to find a location which best meets the requirements of such a facility. A properly chosen site with all of the newly learned requirements taken into account should be far easier, faster, and cheaper to get operational. Now, at the end of the day, that is what everyone wants in this entire process. Never heard a single statement from anyone on either side that was not out of concern for the youth, safety of the residents, or environment. And how many years do we watch this boulder continue to be pushed up this hill, while youth wait in hotel rooms. I know the stress and emotional toll it has taken on the community, but I cannot imagine the toll it has taken on the youth. We must find a sustainable solution that is safe for them, the employees, the community, and the environment that can be implemented quickly. So, thank you for giving us the time today to discuss all of these concerns. I know, you know, you have your, your process. Thank you. I appreciate you coming along. Committee any questions for either Jenna or Tristan. I appreciate you guys coming back today. Sorry again about being bounced from yesterday. We'll see how things go. And hopefully at the end of the day, everybody will be coming to some kind of a satisfactory conclusion. Thank you for joining us at Senate institutions. I have to shift gears at this point we're going to broaden the conversation to get beyond the town of Newbury. And, Tristan, Jetta, you're welcome to stick around and watch how things proceed but I've got to shift to other witnesses at this point. Thank you all for coming. Alex, I am ready for our next witnesses if they're here. Indeed, I will let them in right now. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. We're kind of shifting here midstream to broaden the conversation out a bit from our previous discussion that involved the town of Newbury. And we are now talking about secure facilities for justice involved youth. I had been approached by the State Employees Association Legal Counsel and asked for some time to talk about concerns that employees have with respect to facilities. Conversely, I've also been approached by the state to talk about things from their end and trying to give everybody a little bit of time to educate us on what's going on out there. First witness I have on my list and I don't necessarily want to hold anybody to this particular order. But Patricia Casanova, I think you are on the screen, although I see you as Tracy. Yes, I go by Tracy's my nickname and my preferred name. Okay, well, Tracy. First off, I'm, I'm hopeful for you that that's actually the background of where you're at right now. But assuming it's just one of those things you throw up on the screen, and you're suffering through the middle of winter like every one of us. Welcome to institutions and I ask each witness as we go forward to simply identify themselves. Let us know a little bit about you and how you fit into this picture. I would advise that sometimes we all use words that fit our own particular vernacular, but aren't necessarily known by the common person watching on YouTube. We frankly have no idea how many people are actually watching this proceeding right now, but I will assume for the benefit of everybody that we come down to a real low level on the conversation and try to get plain English out there so people can understand what's going on. If you happen to run afoul of that general hope, I will probably interrupt you and ask you to explain what X, Y or Z is that you just said. It's not to be rude. It's just to let everybody out there know we're going to try to get everybody on the same page. So Tracy welcome to Senate institutions the floor is yours, and you are free to take us away. Thank you so much Senator Benning. I want to thank all so my name is Tracy Casanova I work for the Vermont Department for Children and Families Family Services division. I want to just start off by thanking this committee for taking the time to hear from me today. I'm really glad to see that Senator Mazza is here today as I live in his district he's my representative. Right there and off your condolences. I love my town so I can't. No condolences no condolences needed. So as I mentioned my name is Tracy Casanova I am the chair of the Family Services Labor Management Committee. I want to start my testimony by acknowledging that this committee deals with buildings and infrastructure. My testimony is going to be a blend for the need for physical space as well as a policy implications that are going to come from that. I have worked for the DCF Family Services division for the last 19 years and a variety of roles. For the first 13 years I worked as a Family Services worker on the St. Albans district office. I worked as a child protection worker a juvenile services worker and lastly an investigator. Currently I am the deputy compact administrator for the interstate compact on the placement and children and Commission on juveniles, and I'm the human trafficking consultant for our division. The St. Albans system of care often abbreviated as SOC is in crisis as an end is in need of immediate intervention. This intervention needs to include a program where kids can physically be placed that is safe for them, the community and staff. The system of care includes placements at home with parents kinship foster placements foster care, therapeutic foster care short term stabilization programs such as depot. Placement programs psychiatric hospitals and detention. In order for DCF system of care to operate we need placements that meet the specialized needs of the children in our care. We need all ends of the spectrum and all levels of care in between to be functioning such as placements with family foster care residential treatment programs and detention. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of Woodside DCF had more options for placements across this level of spectrum, this level of care spectrum. While there has been always been a shortage of foster homes, it seems that right now this part of their system is also in crisis. There are many factors contributing as to why this could be happening. Caregivers who are immune compromised and cannot take the risk of accepting placements now. Caregivers who lost their jobs or experienced hardship through the pandemic. Caregivers who have been overtapped and become a bird and become burnt out or need a break, and the inconsistent access to school and community service providers contributing to foster parents saying no to placements. We do not have enough foster homes who can meet some of our special needs of youth we are serving as our children and youth are in crisis right now. These services that would normally serve these kids in the community such as therapists, mental health providers, services through our designated agencies, wrap around services, mentor programs for youth, respite and childcare are also at a diminished capacity due to COVID-19. When Woodside closed without another program ready to take the delinquent population, it created a significant gap in our system and bottleneck in other parts. Caregivers who previously would have been placed at Woodside are now being placed at Depot and those who cannot be placed at Depot based on the severity of their behaviors and or because of diminished capacity are being staffed at a variety of locations. Those youth in our care without placement wondering where they're going to go in the same way we are scrambling to find solutions for where to place them and they deserve better. That is causing a significant gap in our system and data reporting. Depot has become our only staff secure placement for high end system of care youth and children. They are serving kids. I can jump in right here. Depot I do understand what that is but I don't think our viewers do. If you could explain where that is what its original purpose was as opposed to what it may be attempting to be used for now would be very helpful. Absolutely. So Depot is one of our contracted short term residential programs that we have here in the state of Vermont. It is located in the town of Bennington. They serve they have one program that serves girls and one house that serves boys. It is a staff secure program. It was initially intended as a short term seven to 10 day stabilization program. That was the initial intended purpose. And for senators for your edification. Senator Sears will be happy to tell you about his affiliation with that program many many years ago. Thank you sorry to interrupt. No problem. Our staff has become our only staff secure placement for these high end system of care children or youth. They have been serving kids who have acute mental health problems and youth who have significant history of violence and criminal behavior. Their staff are being assaulted on a regular basis and COVID outbreaks have significantly diminished their capacity to the point that DCF has needed to send in our own staff into Depot to help maintain the staffing ratios in order to keep the program open. Last week, you heard that only 4% of youth that DCF serves are delinquent. Unfortunately, that data does not fully capture the population we are serving. The population we are serving includes youth who are engaging in violent and delinquent acts not limited to the use of firearms and drug trafficking. Frequently, there are stipulations made in court that change the youth status with the department. Sometimes those youth are now in our system and are captured as beyond the control of their parents or guardians based on these stipulations. Those stipulations don't change the behaviors they are exhibiting or the risks they pose to themselves or others. In January 2020, a family services worker from the St. Albans district office was sexually assaulted by a youth in DCF custody who was being staffed at a hotel due to a lack of placement. After this assault, a team of family services staff formally referred to as the sweet 16 was formed. Their roles range from family services workers supervisors directors and numerous central office staff myself included to help staff high end system of care youth who are without placement. I have also created a process of high end system of care huddles and meetings that include a minimum of six staff to include central office consultants directors supervisors operations managers director of operation our deputy commissioner and workers. This total is up to about 15 to 20 staff per meeting in order to brainstorm out of the box ideas as to where these children are youth could be placed on an interim basis. This alone required 32 meetings safety for these youth staff and community have to be taken into consideration and many times one of those entities safety was compromised. Since then, family services division staff have provided over 400 hours of staffing high end youth who did not have an identified placement. Those staffings were taking place at police departments, Yellow House and Hyde Park hospitals or horizons apartment in Bennington. Staffings would include law enforcement in order to increase safety, while some only had to DCF staff. Many of those youth had recently been assaulted committed serious crimes been discharged or denied from in state options due to their behaviors, or have been waiting for access to the broader bar retreat. These 400 hours are in addition to the staff working their 40 hours a week. Staffing a particularly violent or high risk youth require the support of law enforcement. Over the last year we have been dependent almost solely on the lamoille and Wyndham County Sheriff's offices for these details. They have been to her backward to try to assist us. Unfortunately, many times they don't have the staffing to continue to hold up our system of care. In essence been using them for safe and secure detention and alternative settings. At this time their capacity to continue to support us has been significantly diminished, diminished due to their staffing shortages. In 2020, there were 187 times the DCF staff were called in after hours to staff you. And in 2021 DCF staff were called in after hours 170 times to staff you. Many times these youth were staffed by the high end staffing team. However, when there was not capacity within that group for staffing, these requests for staffing would go out to the family services all email alias. Even our director of operations has been called in to help provide staffing. When we have to sit with youth at police stations and hospitals and other locations it puts further strain on other systems within the state of Vermont that we rely on. It also strains our relationships with community partners when we are occupying a bed at a hospital that is likely needed for someone else or occupying space in a police department. For example, this past fall I agreed to staff a youth at a police department under the condition that law enforcement would be present. Since that youth had recently been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Within a few hours of being there I was told that the police department did not have the capacity to sit with us due to their own staff shortage. And if they got a call, myself and that youth would be moved to the lobby to sit with this youth alone. It did not feel safe when that happened and requested that another worker be called out to sit with me so that we could provide a two to one staffing for this youth. This youth was later moved to the lobby conference room at the police station where he slept on the floor while we continued to work to find a placement for him. Shortly after that staffing WCIX reported that on November 22 2021 to 17 year old males who had run away from a group home were brought back to the police station. They were held in a conference room when a fight broke out between the boys. According to the articles the police intervened and one of the teens became aggressive towards officers which prompted for a call to back for backup. One of those youth had previously been staffed by one of our by some of our DCF staff earlier that summer. This is the type of data that is missing. We are missing the data about how many kids in DCF custody have gone without placement. The situations we have youth in our care who have engaged in violent assault of behavior or in mental health crisis and we have no place to put them. Those situations are not captured in the data previously provided and it is those situations that are creating the risk for these children and our staff. While we are staffing a high number of these youth we are also sending kids home prematurely when there have been no other alternative options or the risk is too great for our staff and then some would say that the community is then at risk. Some of these kids and youth would have previously been placed at Woodside based on their delinquency status and risk to the community. At this time, all ends of our system are compromised. Some of the programs that were previously listed are only long term residential programs that require approval from the case review committee. Some of them are currently compromised due to COVID-19 which has resulted in reduced capacity within their programs. While COVID has exasperated the problem, it is not certainly the only cause. COVID has just further limited program and foster care capacity. We are lucky for a period of time that we had the ability to contract with the Sununu Detention Center in New Hampshire for detention beds. However, it was very difficult to place Vermont youth in New Hampshire for the purposes of detention based on the need for a court order allowing the out of state placement. Sununu is not a resource to us at this time, leaving us with zero options for secure detention beds in Vermont. While standing up a detention program now is not going to solve all of our programs, it will reduce some of the pressure to our system and other systems. What we know is that there seems to be a rise in youth committing violent crimes. There has been a significant increase in the number of youth coming into Vermont for the purposes of drug trafficking who are gang involved from other states. Over the last year, we have detained 12 out of state youth, a majority who are picked up for drug trafficking charges in which they were found with high quantities of heroin and other narcotics. This is an increase from prior years. As I mentioned, these youth were gang involved and had a history of violence. The impact of COVID on our children and youth mental health is also at an all time high. We have seen instances of youth coming into state custody for the purposes of placement, youth whose parents have begged for help, done all they could, and the systems have not met them as they should. The bottom line is that our system is in crisis. Our children, youth, our staff and communities are being negatively impacted by this lack of stability. Everyone has been saying that something bad is on the verge of happening. I'm here to tell you that something bad has been already happened and continues to happen. In the last year, we had one of our staff sexually assaulted by a youth in custody. We have had kids who have attempted suicide after being moved from secure placements. We have numerous kids staffed in our offices due to foster home shortages, kids who are being staffed at police stations, hospitals, horizons apartments and yellow house. This is a disservice to our state's children and youth. DCF wants to be able to safely meet the treatment and placement needs of these children, but time and time again have to settle for less than what's indicated. We have placed kids at home after committing violent crimes or firearm related crimes because they are too dangerous to be staffed or placed in one of our staff secure programs. We have been asked, we have asked our staff to transport youth who have violently assaulted foster parents and are hoping that nothing bad continues to happen. If something does not change now, bad things are going to continue to happen to the children and youth that we are serving and to our staff and our communities will not be safer. Earlier this week, an article was published by KXAN Texas reporter Avery Travis. This article was talking about the challenges within the Texas foster care system and a quote from this article summarizes the crisis we faced here in Vermont. It said, core failure in the absence of a fully developed system of care, including home and community based resources, targeted and well resource treatment and appropriate placement services matched to match the children's needs. We need a fully developed system of care, which includes all of these pieces as well as placements where kids who are engaging in violent behavior or crimes involving firearms can be placed safely. What we also need is a in state secure setting to place youth on the date the violent act occurs. Recognizing this takes time, but we absolutely cannot carry on for another year under these circumstances. We need a stable and adequate location in the northern part of the state that can meet most of the basic needs for storage, beds, clothing, shower, hygiene products and basic activities to pass time. We need multiple programs that match risk level safety issues and treatment needs. We need more crisis and stabilization beds for mental health and behaviors, behavioral problems. We need guaranteed after hours transportation. We need 25 temporary staff for after hours staffing or 16 temporary staff who can be allowed to be on standby status or contracted to be on standby to respond to high end staffing needs. These temps would be on a rotation to at a time to ensure adequate staffing. We need advanced sitters for hospital based staffing and a commitment to end the utilization of family services workers and division staff to support high end placements. We need the commissioner and secretary to hold a listening session with impacted staff. And lastly, the Labor Management Committee request to be able to meet with Governor Scott so that we can share with him directly the crisis we are in and request his assistance. We need the governor's involvement to help ensure an in state pro secure program is open immediately to place youth when they engage in violent behaviors. Thank you. I appreciate your communications here. I've got a couple of questions I'd like to start with back in 2011 when Irene hit, we had to close Waterbury and Governor Shumlin at the time had a desire to have a wheel and spoke system set up throughout the state and as I looked at what was being planned. I realized he was placing a great deal of weight on building brick and mortar in the southern end of the state, while the actual patients were coming from the northern end of the state. And I literally drew out a map of Vermont to demonstrate what the imbalance was. You've made mentioned about a need in the northern part of the state is that something similar going on here with respect to the clientele and where they are coming from. Well, I do not personally hold the data as to where kids are coming from that we're placing it in Bennington, but I anecdotally believe that that a majority of kids are coming from the northern part of the state and they're having to drive be transported three hours to get to Bennington to depot. So I, if that is data that you are this committee is seeking I can work to providing that. It's time to get it. It will be back up a half a step. This committee deals primarily with brick and mortar. There's a crossover between knowing where your operators are and where they might want to be living, as well as where the folks where they live that are coming into the system. In this case, it's youth and at risk. It's helpful to have a map, literally, that demonstrates where those numbers are coming from. When we want to think about where we should be building facilities or retrofitting facilities in order to meet the needs of these youth. So that would be helpful information. I'm going to relate though that this is one committee only and there are several committees that talk about not just the personnel but the money going in different directions that may need to be had in order to accommodate. This committee unfortunately only has about $124 million in its budget, and it's primarily for all state brick and mortar and that becomes problematic for some of the requests that are obvious. I don't want to hear before me anyway and what we need to do. So anything you can give us by way of a plat, if you will, of where the state clientele is arising from and where the facilities are that we now have where they'd be desired such a document could be created. Love to see what that looks like. I currently have that information but I can work on getting on seeing if that a if we have that information and if not coming up with that for you, Senator. I appreciate that and I did not expect you to bring that with me today, by the way. Committee any questions for Christie. I see no hands. Shannon violet is that how you say your last name violet like the color violet like the color. Or you are a case aid with DCF. I'm no longer case aid I used to be case aid but I'm currently an FSW out of the St Albans office that does investigations and assessments. Okay, so when you say FSW, could you tell us all what that actually means. Yes, it's the designation of basically the social worker or family services worker as we refer to it as the on the ground workers who are doing the work in the communities. The floor is yours and welcome to some of the institutions. And I thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to be here. As I kind of already said my name is Shannon violet and I have been a family services worker with the department for children families for approximately two and a half years now. As I said before I worked for the department in different capacities, including the case in position, which is just a position that helps like assist social workers in their daily roles and also I did a year long internship. And that served for my bachelor's degree and social work that I received from UVM in 2019. Kind of like I already stated my role at the department is what we call in my office and intake worker, which does the investigations and assessments of accepted reports of child abuse and neglect. As I said, I'm here today to speak with you not as an employee of the department but as a member of the public and a VSE a union member. When trying to think of what I wanted to present to you guys and how I wanted to present that. I put a lot of thought into that and I ultimately realized that I could present all the facts in a data form or I could use more specific anecdotal stories of the crisis situation that we're currently facing in our district offices. And honestly, sometimes I think that is just like as important as some of the like hard facts in data. So, even though my role is on the front end and not in the juvenile services world necessarily the impact of not having enough juvenile and youth services in the state of Vermont. This had a trickle down effect into every aspect of the work that family services does. For example, I spent my entire work day yesterday on how to support a youth who was too unsafe to be at home, and the mom did not want the child home because of these behaviors. And the mom kept asking me and begging me to help their daughter get into a safe and place where she could get treatment for these unsafe behaviors. Unfortunately, I had to tell that mother that that was a really unlikely situation that was going to happen anytime in the near future because to simply put it there are no facilities and no placements that can take use with violent behaviors on an emergency true emergency basis. And that's when social workers end up staffing these youth at emergency rooms police departments, etc. So when I had to write a chins petition, which is stands for a child in need of care and supervision, it's what all children who are in DCF custody fall under on it's in statute. When I had to write this chins petition asking for a judge to make an emergency decision on whether a youth was unmanageable or not the planning for how to support this youth was unimaginable. It's not as simple as one things right now as all emergency beds are full. We have discussions about which youth can maybe be removed from the certain program they're in currently to accommodate this other youth to be put in it who may need it more, and which youth is more likely going or more than likely going to be safe enough to be back in the community. This is an impossible task trying to juggle whose mental health is better or worse than someone else's at any given time, because really the reality is all of them need the care and that these services can provide them but our system just can't support it right now. So the entire system of care is being impacted with the lack of resources that are available the one system that has been impacted significantly as a juvenile justice system and the lack of secure facility in the state of Vermont. Prior to Woodside closing judges can send both youth with delinquent status and what policy calls as a chins see which I kind of describe what a chins is in my previous part of like the child the need of parents supervision, and the chins is broken down into separate sub sections to see the specific see just stands for youth that is defined by statute as beyond their parents control and or presents a safety risk to themselves or other. Because Woodside is not available on youth are being placed at facilities kind of as Tracy mentioned that are supposed to be used for short term emergency stabilization that is only supposed to be the like seven to 14 days. It's not used for the Woodside youth because that is our next level of highest emergency placement care for them. Our stabilization programs are no way equipped to be staffing youth with violent behaviors safely. These staff are not trained to work with these youth in and it's not. And these facilities are in no way a secure facility recently use for my office that were placed at these facilities which include like depot. When on run from these programs, which when we say go and run it means they ran away or like absconded from the programs, and we're out in the community freely without supervision. Youth were involved in the criminal justice system in general and in the child welfare system in general are statistically higher rate of becoming victims of trafficking assaults other crimes, etc. And then they are out in the community like that on the run. It's not a safe option. Having little staff that have little to no training and working with youth that have violent behaviors. And these youth are staffing exact these exact youth that have violent behaviors. It's a dangerous situation, because it takes a certain skill set to be able to manage those specific youth. It's not trained for that or having people who aren't trained for that staff these youth it puts the staff and the youth at a very great risk because it's not a safe situation. Many youth that are involved in our system of care have experienced an unmanage an unimaginable amount of trauma in their short lives. We see it every day in the cases we work sometimes passed down from generations. There's enough training in chronic trauma and neglect to know that most youth and people who experience this amount of stress live in a state of flight, fight or flight constantly. Someone who is constantly feeling under stress like this can ultimately lead to poor executive functioning and reasoning skills, along with coping skills, and people can resort to feeling like they need to protect themselves and at times this can look violent. This is our youth are not exempt from that and that is, you know, we don't have a place to support them. I think that youth with violent behaviors mean to be assaulted. No, but I also don't think that it is appropriate necessarily for those used to youth and our workers to be staffing them without the necessary, necessary experience for that. The unfortunate reality is that as long as we have youth who display violent or aggressive behaviors, we need a secure facility. When our only true secure facility for these youth was subtracted nothing comparable to that level of care was added. The remaining system of care was expected to take on that weight and it was unfortunately an unrealistic expectation. The youth with violent behaviors need a higher level of care they're being housed at some of the emergency stabilization programs which again are not meant for that. Including they don't, when kids are there for a long time there's no schooling option no therapy options that can be provided to them which is also not great. The needed those stabilization programs are being shuffled in and out of foster homes, staffed in hospitals or sometimes in police stations. I know specific time when a youth have become assaulted towards hospital staff was also self harming and ended up needing to be put in a chemical or emergency room to maintain the safety for the youth and the staff in the emergency room. Youth was kept in the hospital even after they were medically cured because there was nowhere safe for them to go. We definitely put a large amount of stress on that relationship with that specific hospital, which is a constant worry that I'm facing, working with some of our community partners as we continue to put these strands on these relationships. I worry that unfortunately, if we continue to do that, it's going to be put us in a situation where they're less likely to want to work with us in the future. Despite the hospital pleading for us to find a safer place for this youth, we continue to keep them there as there was literally nowhere to go and they could not maintain safely in a faster home. That's what that situation pointed out for me is this, as long as we have don't have appropriate and secure facility for our youth struggling with violent behaviors, whether it be a family services worker, a community partner or this that youth, someone is going to get hurt. And people have been hurt a recent event at one of our Vermont facilities supporting these high end youth, a staff member was severely assaulted by youth who would have been placed at Woodside with a cast iron frying pan. They were captured a step this staff member and place this youth at further risk of picking up criminal charges. This youth is currently being placed back in the community under GCS supervision, due to a lack of a safe and secure placement for them. I don't really think I need to explain further how that situation greatly impacted the staff safety you safety and now how it could potentially have a trickling effect into the community safety of the Franklin County area. One year ago today, one of my colleagues was sexually assaulted staffing a youth that was known to have sexually offending behaviors. He was stopped by us because there was no facility with an appropriate level of care immediately available to them. So that was why FSD staff or family services staff was asked to do that. I'm one of the first people to volunteer to help out where I can, but to think that I could be called on to staff a youth with aggressive or violent behaviors concerning me. I am not trained for that situation where youth might become physically aggressive with me, and it is not something that is even offered at our basic foundation training. I worry that if this information was not shared with you all you would not see how urgent this need is for a secure facility to staff these youth. All I want and all and I know all my coworkers want is to see these youth be successful. When you throw in custody us workers spending a lot of time getting to know them and getting to know who these youth are as people. I always get asked by friends and family what keeps me going in this difficult work. And every time I think about it, I think of this positive stories of seeing my clients be successful. I worry that the use of these examples I shared are not being set up for success and that the system currently in place for them is setting them up for failure. Thank you. Shannon I'm going to throw your curve ball here. Last week, we heard a lot of conversation about the court system. You brought up the fact that a juvenile entering the system, which in my eyes is the court system as well. Yes. It begins with a chin's petition. Yes. You and I know a chin's petition gets filed. Chin's petition creates a process for the juvenile to run through the court system. The first thing that happens is there's a preliminary hearing and there is a merits hearing and if the merits are contested there's going to be a contested merits hearing. Whether they are contested or not eventually they end up in the final hearing to figure out what are we going to do with this person now that we have adjudicated them to be chins. The court process as you see it right now in comparison to pre COVID. How are we doing with the timing of those cases? It's not great. Yeah, it's not great. It's very slow. I recently had a situation about a month ago where I was asked to testify at a merits hearing that I had like so for the front end staff like me as an investigator were usually the ones who filed those affidavits asking for custody of youth. So I had filed an affidavit at the very beginning of 2019 and I was asked to testify to merits of that affidavit probably about a month ago. And that's like not great because at that time that's a year and a half ago and that's like a very long time to be sitting with that. Because usually they were only a couple of months like merits hearings would happen a few months after the initial filing. Committee questions for Shannon. I don't see any hands. I want to thank you both for coming out this afternoon. We no doubt will be having some more conversation. But again I thank you for coming along to see if you could get me some information to try to develop some kind of a plat of the state and what the distribution looks like for present facilities versus incoming patients. That would be most helpful as we discuss brick and mortar locations down the road. I will absolutely work on that senator. Appreciate that. Committee our next witness is due in at 245 Tristan I don't know if representative McFawn is here we're going to shift the conversation again slightly to talk about one such idea. Tristan if you're still out there someplace I'm sorry. Alex if you're out there somewhere and can let me know who's in the waiting list. Yes absolutely representative McFawn is here I can let him in if you're ready for him. Please do. And if Becky is arriving at some point just let her write on it. Absolutely letting him in now. Representative McFawn are you joining us I can see you on my screen but you're not live yet as they say. This is Senate institutions calling representative McFawn are you out there. Out there now. Good afternoon Topper how are you. All right how you doing. Good. Let me introduce you to the committee for why you're here. Representative McFawn is introduced a bill we do not have that bill. But the topic of his bill is a piece of conversation that this committee is going to have to be dealing with. Once his bill works through the house. And even if it doesn't it's part and parcel of the conversation we've been having. And that we will be having to talk more about how to bring solution to all the problems we've been hearing about. So representative McFawn you've introduced h487 and act relating to a secure facility for justice involved youth. I know you are skilled in testifying before committees and have listened to folks testifying before committees but I give the same spiel to every witness who comes our way. We're talking about this subject that is lower level as we possibly can for the benefit of anybody who may be listening on YouTube. So if you talk about something that is in the vernacular of what you and I would normally understand and I all of a sudden think maybe the general public doesn't understand what you and I are very familiar with. I may interrupt your testimony to try to get to the bottom of that and flesh it out for those watching. In the event that the committee has any questions I'm sure you're more than capable of handling this motley crew of senators, but we will try to get to the bottom of why you introduced what you did and what you're thinking about with respect to this particular facility as a proposal. So with that representative McFawn the floor is yours. All right thanks Mr Chair. I appreciate you having me here to talk about each 487 wise to build necessary. The facility that we previously served justice involved youth at in Vermont was called Woodside. And that's been closed. Because it was determined that it was inadequate to house these youth was also decided that it was appropriate for the department children and families to send these youth out of state to receive services until the permanent solution could be found in Vermont, capable of providing these youth with appropriate services. We've been sending youth out of state for several years now to receive these services. Families do not have a personal that do not have personal access to these youth, unless they travel out of state and sometimes that's a great hardship for people. In order to provide better outcomes for these youth. The Department of Children and Families over the past couple of years has been working to find a permanent solution to serve these youth in state was finally decided that the TCF department family children and families would work with an organization named Beckett. This organization happens to own the building in Newbury, which I'm sure everybody is aware. Because of news reports, while plans to retrofit this building were drawn up and presented to the town of Middlebury for approval. The concept of having the facility in Newbury was rejected. The, the appropriate town board also rejected the application for permits to retrofit the building. It's my understanding now that these decisions by the town of Newbury are being appealed. We have spent enough money and time on this specific solution to this specific problem, and it's an ongoing problem. We don't have an appropriate facility right now to serve these youth in Vermont the town of Newbury doesn't want this facility. There are other problems with this location as well. If I can, if I can just interrupt you, we have spent the past day and a half learning about all of those problems. And I do understand that we are in litigation. I don't want to branch into the litigation question but I do understand that there is apt to be significant delay in anything with respect to Newbury if something actually happens there. I would like to speed up to the point where you stepped in and have suggested something else and get to why. Okay, that's, that's, I was trying to give you reasons why I, I got to the point. It was because of what some of the things I just talked about. And we already have a facility here in Vermont. The facility in Windsor. The support services that I was about to talk about. That is that problem is essentially solved because Windsor has its own police force. And they have mama Scott in the hospital which was feeling near to this facility. Of course we'd have to look at compensation a lot, you know, later on after we find out what that need might be. So since we already own this facility. My position is, let's fill it up staff at what state employees and use it to serve these youth, at least on a temporary basis, instead of spending the money. As you just said, on appeals. And with a town that doesn't want this facility and already have denied the permits. This is why I developed the bill with the Vermont State Employees Association. Committee I'm going to open it up for questions at this point. Madam chair, I mean, Mr chair, before we do that. I noticed on your schedule when I just looked at it. That's that you're going to get a walkthrough of the bill. So you don't want me involved in that. Is that correct? Well, you're welcome to tell us about that but we are going to get a walkthrough if you needed to be someplace. I think the walks will do it. We'll do it. I'm ready for questions. Why don't we wait till the bill comes over in the Senate. I'm happy to do that dick. I mean, we don't know what the language going to be if it passes the house. Why don't we wait. We can talk about that after representative McFawns presentation. I'm waiting to see Mr. Senator McCormick's hand pop up here. I'm sure he's no. If you're asking Mr. Chairman. I think sometimes we don't have a whole lot on our plate right now and it could be a good use of our time to anticipate the possibility of the bill. But I'm not going to cross Senator Mazan this if he doesn't want to do it. He has a point. We don't have a bill. We don't have a bill. We don't have a bill. We don't actually have a bill. Is that diplomatic enough, gentlemen? We don't take up a bill until we have it in our possession. Why are we going to take up a bill from the house and we don't have it. I can ask Becky other questions. Without a genuine walkthrough. Topper, where is your bill right now in the house? It's in the house. Okay. But they also take their corrections and we don't. Well, I understand that, but if this language happens to pop up in that other bill we do take care of. I would like this committee to have a little heads up about what's coming down the pike. But we can hold that conversation for another day. Any other questions for representative McFawn. Topper, I greatly appreciate you coming by here. And wish you well and your endeavors back in the house. Well, I appreciate that. And I may just make one more statement about the urgency of this bill. When you get your walkthrough, you will see that in section one, that is expressing the urgency that I see. I'm assuming that's in the findings. Yeah. Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming. Our next witness is scheduled with three 15, but I am wondering if Alex you've got Becky in the room yet. I have not. I'm sending her an email right now, letting her know that we're ready a little early for her. Okay. We all take a 10 minute break and we'll come back in 10 minutes and see if Becky has arrived. You can mute and stop your videos. We'll see you at. It's called 305.