 The red button is on. We are joined this morning in Senate Judiciary on February 5th, 2021 by the House Human Services Committee, chaired by Representative Ed Hsu. Our two committees have often worked jointly on issues of child welfare and issues regarding child protection. This is an outgrowth of a meeting that we held last week, discussing the Hubbard-Gritch treatment program. I'm hoping it'll be a roundtable discussion with several of the witnesses. And we have the commissioner of DCF, John Brown, Sarah Squirrel, the commissioner of the Department of Health, John Campbell from the Sheriff's Association, as well as Roger Marku, who's a sheriff from Memorial County who's done terrific work up there. We also have Marshall Paul, the juvenile defender, Jim Henry, the executive director of SEAL, Selena Hittman, who is the director of policy planning for Department of Mental Health. I believe somebody from Beckett this year, as well as Steve Howard from the VSEA. And what I was hoping, we could lead off with Commissioner Brown and then kind of, I put out some questions that may not be artfully worded, but they're getting at the issue of our kids exhibiting aggressive or self-harm behavior residential or foster care dealt with currently, what measures are being taken to de-escalate those situations. When there is a child in residential or foster care that is either assault someone or causes significant property damage, what are the protocols for dealing with this? What happens when a child is taken to the hospital? I should have added in there for a mental health crisis. How has that dealt with? My understanding is most of them are just returned to wherever they were, and somebody from mental health sees them and says, yep, they're in a crisis. Are there problems with transport? We've heard of a number of kids being held in police barracks and other locations waiting to transport, because getting transports through the sheriffs is sometimes extremely difficult. Our kids staying for a long period of time in either a hotel or at the police station and our short-term programs being used for long-term placements. I've heard that there are some kids who are attended for short-term placements that are there 90 days or longer. And our juveniles being charged when they act out aggressively, there but actually should have been juveniles who are children in need of supervision who act out aggressively, are they charged and thereby making them delinquent and eligible for programs like the new Coverbridge Treatment former and formerly the Woodside. Those are some of my questions that maybe other committee members have, of either committee have further questions, but I kind of like to lead it off with Sean Brown, the commissioner of department of children and families he needs to get to another meeting, at I think 9.30 commissioner, you're muted. Yes, I'm able to stay until the house is off the floor and I then need to appear in house human services on the committee at that point. So I'm going to try. Well, if the human services committee is here, maybe you would. If I may, commissioner Brown, we are on the house is on the floor at 9.30. So you may be able to remain in this, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but to remain in the Senate hearing until it's finished, because we may be there longer. You may be back here too. So anyway, commissioner, if you want to lead it off and then we'll go to other, maybe the department of mental health and then others, but I would like it to be a round table where somebody from mental health can say, yeah, that's wrong or this is right, or Jim Henry can speak up, Steve Howard can, by raising their hands please. And I see Sheriff Anderson has also joined us. I had a great conversation with him yesterday. About DCF transport, and I'm glad he's with us. Go ahead anyway, commissioner. Good morning to both committees, the Senate Judiciary and the House Human Services, happy to be here today. And also to all of the other witnesses joining in as well. I look forward to a robust conversation this morning. I would say overall, there is stress in our child protection and juvenile justice system in terms of youth. And I think that there are multiple root causes of that stress. I think primarily we're seeing in the immediate term, the impact that the pandemic is having on that and just in terms of the stress it's causing for families and kids and the way we've had to adapt and live and the precautions we need to take on the isolation that's causing. Also it's really impacted how kids move through our systems of care, whether at the foster care level or short-term crisis level or other residential placements, just programs I've had to implement health and safety measures which really slow down their ability to move kids in and out of the program as quickly as we've had prior to COVID. And then also when there's a positive case, they need to restrict who can come into the program and who can leave the program, create staffing challenges and then bottle and then creates, I would say, bottlenecks in the system. We have a team here at the family services division that has done a really good job working with our residential system of care and team from the health department to really triage those issues when they pop up to make sure that we're responding as quickly as possible with the health and safety of the staff of those programs and the kids and limiting the spread, but then also allowing them to hopefully get quickly as back to operational as normal. We recently had a staff positive at a program in the Bennington area. And so I, and I think our teams work really well on that, but I mean, we are seeing just the stress in the system due to multiple factors. And I think there's the report that we submitted that you posted on your website from the public consulting group identifies some areas where we could focus our attention in terms of increasing community supports, make sure we're keeping kids in their homes and not having them need to leave for care or also support their families when they are in care so that they're ready to resume having their child back in the home once they leave the therapeutic treatment milieu that they're in or wherever they are. And then just making sure our families have the tools and our community providers have the tools to do the work. And that's, and those are longer-term, I think system issues that we all need to address. And I think they're in different areas of our, they touch in the mental health system, they touch in the daily system, they touch in our community providers, DCF system of care. So I think we need to coordinate, identify those supports that are needed and then work to create and implement those. That's some long-term work we need to do. In the short term, there are certainly things we're working on in FSD right now to address some of the safety concerns that have popped up given what we're seeing for stress in the system. As you indicated, we are experiencing some issues with transporting youth, which required them to be held longer in environments that's really not good for anyone involved, whether the police department or staff or the youth. We've been working very closely with the Sheriff's Association and Sheriff Anderson and Sheriff Marcu. We think we have a good solution that we're implementing that will improve that system. They've been great partners there. I'll just say that we've been asking a lot of the sheriffs during the pandemic. We're contracting with them to provide security and multiple sites across the state to keep homeless families safe, given issues that are popped up. And so they're spread pretty thin right now. And we just have really appreciated their partnership and their ability to step out where they can. And then I would say we're working with our team here at ES FSD to understand their safety concerns and make sure we're putting new systems in place to make sure that they're not put in those situations again, because it's not acceptable what happened several weeks ago with the youth in a hotel in St. Albans. And I think we all recognize that we need to implement new measures to prevent that from occurring again. I just want to make clear that I don't want to focus on one incident, because I'm aware of staff members that see all being assaulted and a broken noses and other injuries. I'm also aware of staff members at the Beckett Ramon School for Girls also inventing having significant injuries. It's not just there. And I think the workers comp issue that Jim highlighted last week speaks to that problem. Staff getting injured on the job and then up with some cases. I'm concerned about mental health. Are we sending kids who should be in the mental health system in the DCF similar to the way we handle the correction system where people, adults, end up in the correction system because mental health isn't dealing with them. What kind of a, how are you all at Mental Health Commissioner Squirrel or Deputy Commissioner Fox dealing with the kids that we're seeing that who are exhibiting some of these babies? I know they go to the, and also if you could explain when they go to the hospital, I hear about cases where they take the kid to the hospital. They're seen by mental health and then they're returned to the program. No, it doesn't seem anything happens. I will take that as my cue. Good morning everyone. Good morning. For the record, Commissioner Squirrel of the Department of Mental Health. Great to see everyone this morning. Deputy Commissioner Morning Fox is joining me as well. And I just wanna thank Senator Sears for setting the table for this conversation. It certainly is an urgent and important one. I can share some high level point, Senator Sears, just in response to your very good questions. I did wanna just, at a high level when we think about our mental health system of care for children and youth, we really do think about it as a continuum from promotion, prevention, early intervention, treatment and recovery. We have a robust system of mental health services and supports across the state that you can access at different points through that continuum. And I think we would all agree that the bottom line is the earlier we intervene, the better the outcomes. And so the more that we can focus on more of those promotion, prevention, proactive measures, the better off we're going to be in the long run. With that said, we know that we need targeted intervention. So the vast array of school-based mental health supports that we have, as well as the residential services, crisis-fed programs and inpatient system that we have that support children and youth. I have some data slides that I'll follow up with these two respective committees that really look at longitudinal data related to demand for children's mental health services. It actually goes all the way back to 1986 and you see this continuous increase in need and acuity. Certainly the impacts of COVID, I think have amplified that, particularly for youth ages 12 to 17. I also have data that I'll send around related to access to a residential system of care. It actually breaks it out by DCF Dale and DMH. So you can start to see the trends in terms of children and youth accessing residential care. We did see a slight increase this year for children and youth through the Department of Mental Health accessing residential care. And so that gets to, I think some of the complex interlocking factors that many children, youth and their families are experiencing in terms of poverty, mental health issues for families, substance use, trauma, the whole host of things that we know are putting pressure on our vulnerable children, youth and families across the state. I can also say that when I started my career, I actually worked in a group home. I worked in a micro-residential treatment home at Washington County Mental Health. So I really understand what it means to do that work on a day-to-day basis. The intensity of need and acuity for children and youth who require that level of care. And I think if you talked to direct care staff who work in these programs, we really see it as our job to try to help modulate the behavior of a child or youth who might be in crisis. And just also wanna remember that this all is all linked to brain science, right? We know how trauma impacts the brain. We know children and youth get into fight or flight mode and it's really our job to make sure that we can intervene and to try to support them through that crisis escalation. We also know that all of our efforts from a clinical standpoint are really focused on how do we intervene earlier? So we don't end up with an escalated youth who might be externalizing behaviors through regression. So I just wanted to note that across that our residential system of care, there's individualized treatment plans for children and youth. We're really trying to understand what are their coping skills and strategies. Therapeutic crisis intervention is one of the evidences practices that many of our residential programs and crisis programs are trained in. And also getting to the intersection of mental health and DCF, I know I ran school-based mental health services for over a decade in Memorial and Caledonia County. Some of the very rural areas, a lot of intensive need within those family systems. And I would say half to three quarters of the children and youth that we served in that community mental health program were also in DCF custody. So there is this link between children and youth who are in DCF custody and connecting them to our mental health services in a really meaningful way. So I did just wanna underscore that, that that connection and collaboration is happening all the time. We have many children and youth who are served by our community mental health agencies funded through the DMH case rate that are also in DCF custody. So again, I'm just trying to share it really as a network of resources and supports. I would always say that we can do better. And I think this conversation is an opportunity to get to that. Related to your question about when a child or youth might be escalated and need to go to the emergency department and deputy commissioner Morning Fox can also jump in on this as well. Essentially, we have a network of QMHPs which are qualified mental health professionals who have received special training so that they can screen children and youth. And what they're really screening for is do they meet hospital level of care? And obviously all of our inpatient units which are at the brad over a retreat, it's all CMS federal funding. So we certainly have to make sure that the presentation of that child or youth indicates that higher level of care. And so that's exactly what the screeners are doing in coordination with ED staff and other docs. So that's part of the system. Obviously that's a very restrictive level of care and can be, you can access that system voluntarily, you can access that system involuntarily, but certainly it's something we take very seriously because we wanna serve children and youth in the community as much as possible. We also have a network of crisis beds across the state as well, hospital diversion programs through NFI that also provide services and supports to children and youth because there's the bookends of the system, right? We wanna make sure we have adequate inpatient capacity in our meeting the needs of those children and youth. We also wanna make sure that we have a strong, robust community system so that we can divert the need for those higher levels of care. And I just ask you a question about the beds and I'm trying to understand that I don't wanna, I may know too much sometimes, but kid A is in the Washington County Mental Health Turtle Rock or Turtle, whatever it is. You have two beds there. You have to move one out to get somebody else in. This is what I've heard. And the kid A gets moved out who's a DCF kid ends up in a motel or in some other setting, which police station or whatever because there's a lack of beds. Is there a lack of beds in that system that is creating a danger for some folks for putting kids out who shouldn't be out for this? Yeah, I can't speak as knowledgeably to the Turtle Rock program. However, what I can say is that when we think about our... Turtle Rock DCF or DMH. Yeah, and so... I thought that was Washington County Mental Health. It is. I've created this specialized program to support DCF and the transition while the Beckett program is being established. Certainly we have, we did say decreased capacity across the state as a result of COVID, particularly in our crisis beds and in our inpatient capacity. I also have some data. I testified on this yesterday in house healthcare just in terms of that capacity. I think we all might agree that, demand tends to outpace resources across the system of care in general. We have a children's care management team that their job 24, seven a day is managing these acute cases and the movement of cases. So, for what it's worth, we do, I think currently at this moment in time, there's a lot of pressure on the system and there is reduced capacity. The other thing I would just note, I know Senator Sears, you were really interested as are we in getting to solutions as well. So one that I would offer for both of the respective committees is one of the areas that we're also looking at, in addition to ensuring that the systems are connected, if there are gaps in terms of referral to mental health services, I certainly wanna work with Commissioner Brown to address those. We've also put forward as part of our FY22 budget, we recommend the implementation of mobile response and mobile response would really allow us to deploy more proactively community mental health teams to children, youth and families in their homes prior to a crisis hitting such a threshold that you might need to involve law enforcement, that you might need a higher level of care. I would also note that this model that has been implemented in other states, particularly in New Jersey, they really focused this work to support foster families and for children and youth who are in a foster care situation. We know that there can be escalations there, that can lead to that placement being disrupted. So I think there really is an opportunity where by implementing mobile response and focusing perhaps on children and youth who are in foster care, we could maybe achieve some of the great outcomes like our friends in New Jersey did. They had almost all of the foster children who entered foster care who had mobile response were able to remain in their placement. So I just offer that as another potential solution area that we should all be thinking about. And I'll pause there and see if Deputy Commissioner Morningbox has anything that he'd like to add. I think the piece that I would just like to address I know that Senator Sears, you brought up the question of youth being brought to the hospital being seen and sent back to a program. I think you have both, you do have youth who are brought into an emergency room to be screened and are sent back, if you will, and some that aren't. I think just so that everyone's on the same playing field as far as what they're looking at, they're really trying to determine if the behaviors, the dangerous behaviors, whether it be assaultive or self-injurious is that really a result of a mental illness, their depression causing them to hurt themselves or severe anxiety or even psychosis causing them to assault someone else or is it a function of not having poor coping skills that they have not been able to develop so that they can manage frustration and anger at their current situation. Youth will, having been a youth, not too long ago but about 40 or 50 years ago, we act out as kids when we're frustrated and when a child is placed in custody and they're being told they can't leave a placement or something of that sort, that's an incredibly frustrating situation for anyone, let alone for a youth who's really working on trying to develop their coping skills. And so, let me try to describe a situation and then you can respond to that. And back in the day when I was working in residential treatment, I used to say that it was tougher to get a kid into Woodside than it was to get a kid into Harvard. And I'm not sure if that isn't true today of getting somebody into a retreat. But kid, kid A, smashes furniture, assaults a staff member. They take the kid to the emergency room in Bennington at the Southwest Vermont Medical Center seen by somebody from the designated agency in Bennington United Counseling Service. And instead of sending the kid to someplace else, sends that same kid back into the environment that he just was acting out against. It's just, I mean, there are certain, he's already committed to at least two crimes that would be, if you were an adult, that could be charged with serious crimes. This whole thing, a staff member, over $1,000 worth of physical damage to the building or to the furniture and whatever. And they're told, send them back and they're frustrated. They will try to work with DCF. They don't want to get rid of the kid, but maybe the kid needs to be in a place like the retreat, but you can't get in there. That's- I think it might be more that, in that type of situation that you're describing, even though we don't want to talk about that particular situation, but in a situation similar to that or that kind of situation, you're right that returning to that same environment may not be the best option, but that doesn't mean that they need to be in the hospital. And so there starts to be the conversation that's quite often trying to happen at two o'clock in the morning to try and find an alternate placement. And I think that's where some of the rubber meets the road is that you're right, going back to that same environment where this youth was incredibly frustrated and if the screener, the qualified mental health professional has determined that this is a result of their development, their inability to manage their anger, their frustration, things of that sort, but not that they're having a psychiatric crisis per se by those kind of definitions. Then yes, going back to that same environment is probably not the best option, but also doesn't necessarily mean that they also need to be in the hospital. And so that's where the collaboration between our departments is an important piece to try and find that other alternative placement. I appreciate that. And then the other frustration added to that is the state's attorney says, why do I bother charging? Nothing will happen. Senator, I represent a few comments or questions. Thank you, Senator. I can't raise my hand because I'm a co-host. Commissioner Squirrel, you talked about the mobile crisis, that this is an initiative and it may be unique to the Chittenden County area, but the Community Mental Health Center there, Howard has something called first call. And I believe that there was within the district office and I'm Commissioner Brown, a contract with Howard as well to do intensive home visits, to in fact address some of the, what you are talking about and presenting as a needed intervention. And so I'm wondering, are these unique to Chittenden County or sort of more, and you're trying to expand or are you trying a whole different model? Like Senator Sears, I cut my teeth in this world and so it may be too long ago. But at one point, I thought we were talking about no wrong door and that children and youth who present ourselves are complex individuals with educational, emotional and family issues all wrapped up. And you have the role of the Department of Mental Health and then you have the role of DCF and the DCF Family Service Workers. And when more than, close to 300 times in the last year, family service workers who are not correctional officers, who are not things, people like that, were called out after hours to provide coverage because the child was, the youth was not hospital ready or there wasn't a bed or there wasn't transportation. So I'm not, I mean, I get nervous when we hear, well, they're not hospital ready. Well, anyway, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Representative Pugh, what was that number again, the number of call outs? 280, after hours and with a mixture of things that they had to do, provide coverage because there was not a bed, provide coverage because transport wasn't happening. Provide to help staff at a hospital, you know, the screener. So for various different things. And that is, that sort of goes to your question maybe or who was trained, who was skilled to do some of these different things and who should be doing it and is it a lack of resources, i.e. there's no, they're not enough beds. Is there a lack of people to transport that? Either commissioner Brown or commissioner Schwerl or deputy commissioner Moine Clark or any of these women. Yeah, I can just offer the thank you representative Pugh. I really appreciate your thoughtful comments and have so much respect for your experience in the system. Just going back to the mobile response piece and the crisis piece. Yes, the Howard Center was a real leader, early on in terms of thinking about how did we respond earlier and proactively? We held some round table discussions about a year and a half ago exactly around this issue. And what we heard from families coming to table to the table was, yeah, yes, 10 years ago, I could get more of that in-home support. And one of the things you'll see in the data that I can follow up with is we see this increased trend line in terms of need for emergency services for children and youth. So I say that only to articulate the demand in that specific area has been increasing significantly. In the past three years alone, we have seen significant increases in children under nine who are accessing crisis services. So again, it gets to the demand kind of outpacing resources, which is why we feel at this point we really need to target resources around proactive intervention measures like mobile response that maybe haven't been scaled up or implemented as robustly across the state in an equitable way because we see that as a real opportunity and we do wanna get ahead of it. So I guess that's just some thoughts related to mobile response and crisis response. And I can also assure you that our community and mental health agencies and staff also working in 24-7 capacity across the state are doing everything that they can to try to triage these services and supports at the community level. And also just wanna underscore that inpatient psychiatric hospitalization is a highest level, very restrictive level of care. And we really wanna be putting our energy into, yes, if it's appropriate and then clinically indicated for that child or youth, we want them to access that care in a timely way. However, we also wanna be building out the community system to ensure, would a crisis bed be appropriate? Would hospital diversion be appropriate? If we could have responded to the family in a more proactive way, could we have avoided that need in the first place? Those are just a couple of comments. Can I just make a comment? And then Monica Hutt, who's the commissioner of Yale has joined us and she may wanna comment because of her new role in the administration, which has just been, I don't know if it's a promotion or a sideway. How much of this demand or stress on the system is due to substance abuse among parents? When you talk about a tremendous increase in those under nine, and I'm wondering how much of this is due to the substance abuse amongst parents and kids growing up and increasingly dysfunctional. I don't know if you wanna speak to that at all, as contributing Commissioner Brown, Commissioner Squirrels, Commissioner Lapp. Yeah, I would just jump in here, thank you Senator, that we did see over the last five years an increase in our caseload of kids coming into our care and custody. And it did coincide with the increase in the opiate issues the state have been grappling with and our review of the cases definitely tied that increase of kids coming in in many cases to opiate substance abuse addiction issues for the family. So there is a correlation there from the data that we have seen that that definitely plays a role into kids coming into our system of care. Monica, is there a way of zeroing in on those families? So certainly, good morning, everybody. Monica Hutt, I'm the commissioner of the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living. And as Senator Sears indicated, I'll be shifting roles in a week into the prevention chief officer for the state of Vermont. So it's all not yet dug in at all, Senator. I would certainly echo what Commissioner Brown said, having worked at DCF myself for a period of time and in community as well, certainly see the correlation with opiates. I think we also see and have always seen historically a correlation with substance use. So not only opiates, but alcohol use is also a huge component of what the dynamics that stress families significantly and see kids coming into custody. So I've gotta believe there is a way to target it and look at it more clearly and recognizing that the treatment for that is gonna be a whole holistic family treatment. It will be supporting kids while we're supporting families and never able to get away from the social determinants that really contribute to that substance use and misuse. So it's a really big picture, but I do think that while we're gathering that and thinking about that big picture, we're gonna have to create some more targeted strategies a little bit more immediately because we can't wait on all of that to fall into place. I also just wanna take the opportunity if the committee doesn't mind to just reframe really quickly. Selena Hickman is here joining me today on the committee. She's actually has changed her role. She was at DMH and we stole her away as Commissioner Squirrel reminds me often to become the division director at the Department for Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living. So Selena leads our Developmental Disabilities Division. Just wanted to acknowledge that she was here and able to contribute. Yeah, we had the wrong title for her. We had her still with DMH. Yes, I will refute that always because we were very happy to have her join us. Great, which one of the things that's kids are kids, but how much do you in your current role, Dale, Commissioner Squirrel, Commissioner Brown, how much do you coordinate the response in these families? And I don't have the Commissioner corrections here, but I know in a lot of cases, you have all four departments dealing with the members of the same family. Is there a coordination going on? Yeah, I am speaking from the DCS perspective. We have teams that meet regularly with a staff from Sarah Shaw at the Department of Health and Department of Disabilities and Aging and Independent Living that review individual cases and families and what are we seeing and what are the services they need and who takes the lead in providing that and making sure those families are getting access to those services. And then also when youth begin to escalate for various reasons, those teams reconnect to see what's the next appropriate step and placement for that youth. In terms of is it a residential program? Is it a mental health stabilization program? For youth, we are seeing an increase of youth on the autism spectrum and also are there other specialized programs that might meet that youth or family's needs? And so our teams do work together quite regularly to triage individual families and kids. Yeah, I would... Go ahead, no, go ahead. I was just gonna add to what Commissioner Brown articulated and yes, at an interagency, this agency level, there's an incredible amount of coordination happening. And then at the community level, just reflecting back to the work that I was doing in the Moille and Caledonia County, I think I spent half of my time in the Morrisville DCF office at coordinated service plan meetings, really triaging how do we meet the needs? Who's gonna do the case management and outreach with the family in our school-based mental health meetings, DCF always at the table with education, with mental health. So that coordination is really intensive both at the AHS level and at the community level. And just going back to the comments about opioids, I was sitting with some educators virtually from Rutland and we were talking about, they had this kind of just complete wave of kindergartners and first graders presenting with such intensive need. And you could literally trace it back to five or six years earlier, the opioid epidemic that they were focusing on, that they were experiencing in that community. So you can just see from a developmental standpoint on children the impact that it is having across the state. This might be a good segue. We talked a little about transports and a little bit about charging. We have John Campbell, James Pepper, Sheriff Marku and Sheriff Anderson. Do y'all wanna talk a little bit about both charging and as well as transporting kids because it may or may not be true what I hear is that it's really difficult to get a transport in off hours. It might not be that difficult at 9.30 in the morning, but at 9.30 at night, it's very difficult when a crisis occurs. So maybe the four of you can jump in or whatever you'd like. Senator, if Sheriff could start with the transport, I think Sheriff Marku can answer some of your questions. I would like Dota to get to the prosecutorial. How these kids are being dealt with when there is a serious damage done or serious assaults. And that's Senator, that's why we've asked Diane Wheeler who handles these cases up in Franklin County and has a great experience with that and she is here and answering. But I should have asked Erica also. If you wanna just briefly consult with her, she's frustrated by the situation and she has programs, that residential programs in her county and Seahall and Vermont School for Girls for some of these issues. If you'd like, I'm more than happy to try to contact her while Sheriff Marku or Sheriff Anderson speaking and then see if she'd like to join. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. If she can't, maybe you can just. Diane is able to test out one of this. So I think that's what's going on. I thought Jim Hughes was the prosecutor. Jim is the state's attorney. Diane is the deputy state's attorney, but she is. Oh, okay. All right. Oh, good. Okay, thank you for clarifying that for me. And yeah, she handles all these juvenile cases and she's handled some major ones and ones that we're discussing last week and that's why we asked her to come on. Okay. Go ahead, Roger and Mark, excuse me, Sheriff Marku and Sheriff Anderson. All right, thank you Senator. I'll go first and Sheriff Anderson, you can clean up like you usually do. Good morning, everybody. Since March of last year, our two departments particularly have been involved in, it's like we're an arm of the agency of human services. We have, at one time, my department has had nine or 10 people working every night over night shifts at the motels as Senator Sears mentioned. And that has put a lot of strain. It's substantially less than that. Last night we had a crew of four people and then we had transports and I'm not sure, we had two transports afternoon into the evening and I'm not sure if they were DCF or mental health, I haven't seen the paperwork yet. But so there is a tremendous amount of stress on us as well. We're losing people and the police academy because of COVID hasn't had the capacity to keep recruits in the pipeline for replacements. And we're working on that too as a group. Some of the additional stresses on top of the stresses we have is when we're asked to provide security for either DCF or mental health or even we worked with Dale on a particular case. And so that's in lieu of secure a secure facility to keep these kids or these individuals in. And usually we've had a particularly this summer we had a couple of really tough, tough cases in which we required a couple of deputies. And in one case we had three deputies at a time. And that's so that they have the ability not to be restrained and to have free access of the house that they were in. But quite frankly, a lot of the individuals we deal with are very violent and have had a history that demonstrates that. So we're weighing that, we're juggling that awareness that these are still juveniles with the fact that we're responsible for their security and the safety of not only them but the staff that from either any one of the departments that come and sit with them. So it's a tough, tough situation but I think particularly Mark and I understand that we are partners and we are part of the solution. We're the last people you wanna have to call but when you need us, you need us. So for me, one of the things that I am working with with the partners with DCF and I've worked forever with Fox is not all of these individuals that we use as long as they have the proper training need to be certified police officers. So that's one thing is that we're finding retired law enforcement officers that don't necessarily want to go back to the academy for what we call the level two which is what used to be called a part time training but these people have 30 years of experience. And quite frankly, the best tool that we have is our ability to talk and de-escalate and all this stuff on our gun belt. We hardly ever use, we have to be trained and prepared but we don't really ever use that stuff in comparison to our ability to de-escalate. So that's kind of where I'm at we will continue to try to recruit people and hire them. It is tough to get people out of bed at two, three in the morning or on a Sunday afternoon or whatever. And that's agency heads, that's our problem, it's our job to motivate folks to get out there when they're needed. But I don't have a very big department but we certainly, we answer the phone when people call us. So Mark, I don't know, Mark can speak to a plan, I believe he'll speak to a plan that we have to try to further create an efficiency within our group to further help folks out that need it. And I'm the Northern guy and he's the Southern person. So go ahead, Mark. But there's 14 of you. Right, and if they were all available, if they were all up to staff and everything, this would be much easier. If they're all willing to do it, you too. Yeah, and sometimes it's not willingness, it's the fact that they just don't have the capacity. So I can control what I can control and I'm on the team. Mark. Thank you for that, Roger. So just to start, I know the legislative committees enjoy statistics. So in 2020 during COVID, my department saw a reduction of about 66% of requests for DCF transports. Why are we dealing with this problem now? Because we have a lot of people who are dealing with this problem now because we have just started seeing the return of DCF transports and the need for movement. Now is that indicative of the entire state? I don't know. But what I do know is that we, back in 2011, Deputy Commissioner Fox and my department worked closely together after the flooding of Irene because we ran into what I'm gonna call a process and communication issue between our department for the purpose of secure transports for people in mental health crisis that needed to get to treatment settings but were too violent to go by other means. We are starting those conversations now. Sheriff Marku and I have worked with Commissioner Brownstaff. We have a plan in place where effectively we're working to save the state money in terms of what is delivered for this service but also to make sure that it is getting the services quickly as possible. What was happening before is that what I'll call the origin county and the destination county were contacted. And then if those agencies were not able to provide the transport, then follow on in successive counties would be contacted. The difficulty with this is simply the human issue. When you call someone at two in the morning, similar to if you received a call at two in the morning, what are things that could happen? People fall back asleep without following up on phone calls. People are trying to wake up other people who are asleep. Some people are currently working in other capacities and they're able to do the work but they're not able to do the work for maybe 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever that may be. And so through that, we're talking about a child who's sitting in a police department in a residential treatment center in a juvenile facility. And they are looking for movement and this is time that is ticking. So the plan that we're working on creating is essentially streamlining the line of communication and expediting the access to personnel through means that already exist. I've offered my dispatch, which is a 24 hour dispatch that has all the resources that remote workers currently do not have at their homes to be able to facilitate some of this communication to ensure that the shares receive the documents that they need as well as ensure that DCF is getting a team of deputies or civilian staff to respond as quickly and expeditiously as possible. I don't want to talk about the specific incidents but I do want to bring light to one, I had actually two, I had a deputy who or two deputies who were providing transport for Department of Mental Health about two weeks ago and at the same time we received a similar request for DCF, one was from St. Albans, one was from Bennington. We wanted to do the Bennington one first because that was the closest but the child was not prepared to go. And so in that case, the St. Albans person was, we now have a five hour turnaround, six hour turnaround to be able to make that move before we come back. We had another instance where we had, and Sheriff Mark who and I were working on this, we had a person who was ready to go and there's just a mix up about the authorization to move the person. And so when I say some of these are communication issues, it's sometimes it's the bureaucracy in the red tape that ties up these issues and it's getting the right people into the right room to have the conversation. So working with Commissioner Brown's staff, we have this plan in place, just now I received the documents that we were waiting for to finalize and be able to start training my staff to pick up the ball on this. And I'm hopeful that we are able to deliver to the point of staffing, we've testified about this in Senate government operations. There's an issue about what we call poaching officers. Currently recruiting efforts are targeted at other law enforcement agencies. I just lost two officers within the last month to another agency who was hiring. And so it can be incredibly difficult, especially when there's a, I guess what I'll say is a culture change that law enforcement is looking at nationally in recruiting. And so we are working through those issues. I have several applicants that are in the process, but as COVID also puts limitations on capacity at the academy, we're also working on strategies to deliver training in alternate ways. So you have a transport to Bennington from St. Albans or a, and a transport from St. Albans to Bennington? So in that instance, no Senator, it was a transport from St. Albans to Bratibro and a transport from Bratibro to Bennington. Oh, okay. And so that was a Sunday afternoon and we attempted to contact a variety of people, but on short notice sometimes in an area with sparse communication efforts, cell phone coverage, it can be hard to get someone, you get a voicemail, you get a voicemail. So we do work to access our staff. We have an incredibly responsive and active staff. We have a willingness to work. And one of the reasons that Sheriff Marku and I are our partners in this were the two highest delivering agencies for the Agency of Human Services. We actually just ran the report. So we enjoy doing this. We have staffs that are committed to doing this. And we're also, we're two departments that are proactive and creative in identifying ways that we create the least trauma, the least impact on youth, people with mental health. We started delivering or utilizing no restraints or soft restraints instead of the traditional metal restraints. We started training before training was mandated on how to deal with people involved with trauma, trauma-informed policing, trauma-informed education even. So we've done a lot of work in a lot of creative ways to help ensure that these populations who they're not criminal, but we have tools to take, to ensure their safety in violent settings. I'd like to, in the immediate future, if we could set up a meeting with you and myself and Sheriff Marku and John Campbell and Senator White from government operations to talk about something, is that something even the budget will build on transporting folks? John, do you have, is Diane Wheeler here? Yes, Diane is here. And also, Erika, I just got- Oh, fantastic. So Erika, Erika's not on yet. I don't, I don't believe you guys should be coming up. But Diane is here and she'll be able to give you some ideas of what's happening up in the Northern counties. Yeah, I guess I'm specifically also looking at, well, I'll wait for Erika to ask that question. Diane, welcome to Senate Judiciary and House Human Services. Thank you very much. And I sent you a message that was meant for Representative Whitman, but- Oh, okay. Good morning all. You can ignore the message. I shall do so. I just wanted to note that the St. Albans District really highlights a great number of the issues that are presenting themselves before these committees. And very specifically what I'm noting is that we have a mental health crisis among some of our juveniles, which result oftentimes in delinquent behavior. And Senator, you've asked what happens in those circumstances, if they're in a foster home or some placement, even an alternative school program where they commit or engage in behaviors that would be considered delinquencies, such as unlawful mischief, assaults, domestic assaults, aggravated domestic assaults. And the answer is not a satisfactory one because the answer is it depends. It depends on the student's mental health, their cognitive abilities, whether or not we can impart a prompt response to their behaviors, or do we have to cite them out if we're going to give them a citation and bring them in as a delinquent six to eight weeks, which is the typical time between an event and a juvenile coming to court. So what we have done up here in Franklin County is looked at the crime, looked at the reason behind it, and assessed whether or not that crime or that delinquency is one that causes harm to the juvenile or others. Does the community need protections? Do we need conditions of release in the juvenile court to protect an individual or a group of individuals? Specifically, let's say, if it's a lute and lascivious conduct at a school or a program, do we need to protect the members of that program, that school? So based on the answers to those questions, we make decisions about charging the juvenile as a delinquent. What we do lack is prompt response, as I've indicated, but sometimes with persons who might not have a mental health issue, but are just violent in the community, we have a bigger problem because we don't have a place for those juveniles to go. Our system has mental health services and Representative Pugh has pointed out a great resource in Chittenden County. I know a number of people down there have utilized it. Frankly, we do not, but there are residential beds, there are stabilization beds throughout the state for these juveniles. But what about that juvenile who is acting out, putting a leg of a chair through his mother's head? Doesn't have a mental health problem. But is violent and engaging in those behaviors. It's difficult for DCF to place those persons, that juvenile, in a foster home. It really doesn't need the mental health issues. Sometimes there's no drug or substance issue as well. So that's why as I listened to the hearings concerning even the new bed placement in Newberry, excuse me, I have to wonder two things. Can that serve the violent community unsafe juvenile? And how do we address females? Because Newberry is taking males only. And I can let this committee know that we have had a DCF worker assaulted in the head, punched in the head by a female juvenile and DCF custody. And that DCF worker suffered some injuries as a result of that. Now at the time that juvenile female was able to go to DCF, excuse me, go to Woodside. But without that, where are these teens going? Well, the answer is currently hotels and St. Albans police department, at least in Franklin County. And that is not safe for any of them. For the law enforcement for DCF and for the juvenile themselves. The children who do have mental health issues who get screened because we do have an embedded mental health worker with state police, which has been an incredible help. And if the juvenile gets screened in his screen for Brattleboro, we have had circumstances up here in the last 30 to 60 days where a juvenile has sat at the emergency department for overnight or for a number of days, often staffed by DCF persons until a bed is available down at Brattleboro. Often what happens is there, what has occurred in those circumstances is the juvenile's emergency, the crisis dissipates over that time. So by the time a bed is available at Brattleboro, they're no longer in crisis. So they get transported to Brattleboro and quickly turn around and come back to our community. That is not a satisfactory response for anyone because the issues for that juvenile are still present, but they have not been addressed because of the time between crisis and transport. Now there are at times when juveniles, Senator Sears you had asked are being brought into the DCF system and mental health system as a way to address their mental health situations. And it is akin to what we've done with law enforcement over the years. And that is the parent might have been trying to get services for the child, they haven't worked, the child is still engaging in harming behavior, they're harmful to others. So it ends up that that juvenile comes into custody because the DCF is able to get services in place much quicker than they can in the basic community. Can I just, just before we go too far, I'm trying to understand if you're suggesting the need for more secure settings. Your Honor, excuse me, Senator, in my work for over 25 years here in Franklin County in the juvenile systems, I also do the major child abuse cases. We do need actually a replacement for Woodside, a detention center. We have treatment placements. We do not have a place for the violent juvenile. And that is something, we have one, two, two or three persons right now that could utilize that type of facility. And again, it needs to have the ability to take females. You know, maybe Commissioner Brown can refresh my memory, but I do want to get on to State Attorney Martha, too, she's been kind enough to join us. But you've opened up a whole slew of questions, so. As I indicated, Senator, we do charge some juveniles who engage in delinquent behavior while in DCF custody, while at least alternative school programs are programs here in Franklin County. That's a good segue, Erica, Matt, that you, whatever reason, Bennington has both the Bennington School for Girls operated by Beckett and see all ink programs. Erica, maybe you could comment on this. And I appreciate you're coming at short notice to join us, but the real question, and you and I have a conversation about this, is regarding charging juveniles who either assault staff or do tremendous damage. And maybe you and Diane can join in that conversation, but many times the police don't want to charge and you don't want to charge. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, so with both of those programs in the community, there's always, usually once a week, we'll have, one of those programs will be, it'll get to the issue where the police and DCF are not able to kind of work out what's gonna happen to this individual on their own, and then that's when they call the state's attorney. So, we've done a number of things. Beth Sawsville, I don't know if you've had any, if her name's come up, but she's the district director for DCF currently. Her name always comes up when I talk to Mr. Brown, he's always moving her out of Bennington to some other policy. So, yeah, we talked a couple of years ago about the idea that I was really struggling with 204, 206 houses of violent kids. Like there are juveniles there, that's why they're there. Same with Vermont School for Girls. So, when we have those calls, come in pretty careful about communicating with the police agency, the placement agency. So, whether it be Vermont DCF or if it's a kid, Vermont School for Girls, Girls has a number of juveniles placed there from out of state. We kind of problem solve as a group before we make decisions to remove anyone from the program or even charge them with a delinquency. I've utilized CRJ for probably the last year and a half. When we have the police respond to one of the residential placements in Bennington, if it's something where I have the director saying, the director of the program saying, yeah, we could be okay with this person staying here. And unfortunately, we just had some change in personnel there. So, I haven't had the opportunity to talk to Jim Henry yet about the SACs on the call though. But they, Lita will take, will CRJ will intervene and most of the cases, that's how they resolve. So, if it's a juvenile that has an outburst while they're trying to restrain or, it's interesting to me because some of them come in as the kid that doesn't, he has an outburst when he's told to go back to his room because he didn't ask permission for something. And I struggle with those because I'm like, well, yeah, that's not unexpected, right? I mean, there are kids that are there that have these types of issues. I think we've done a good job of being able to, I very rarely are filing delinquencies on cases that where the kid is placed in a residential placement in Bennington. Where we run into problems is, as Diane was indicating, there are some that are super violent. You know, I don't know if Senator, you remember, 10 years ago, we had a teacher that lost an eye at Bennington school when it was still Bennington school because a juvenile put a pencil into her eye. And so stuff like that, we also had the case at Bennington school with the boy that seriously almost beat the woman to death with a dumbbell and butt for the other residents that they wouldn't, he would have succeeded. So those are the cases that we don't have a place for those kids, those juveniles on a short-term temporary, this is an emergency situation. That said, I'm always concerned that, you know, Diane and I have been doing this an awful lot of years. And so we're not sometimes as quick to respond with this kid needs of resident, you know, a high-scale secure placement where a little, we think about it a little more, because we've been doing it for so long. But, you know, when you have counties where that's just not happening, or that there's kind of this general aura around the whole juvenile world where people, you know, new attorneys in particular and new police officers get panicked dealing with juveniles because they're not sure. I mean, I see Marshall's on the call. I mean, there's a lot of areas where it's like people are, it's a very complicated area of the law. So yesterday, I think, no, Wednesday morning, we had our juvenile justice stakeholders conversation. And I was thinking, just kind of thinking outside the box about this issue when I thought, why couldn't we have some secure beds? And rather than support secure beds for year-round when we may or may not need them, is there a way for us to hire essentially contractors that their job is to have a juvenile for a short period of time in more of a residential placement. We've talked about how you can't just put kids like this in a violent juvenile into a regular foster home. But I talked about life management. And I know, Senator, you hear me talk about this all the time, but, you know, I'm not saying we put a bunch of the violent juveniles living in the same house together. But that model where we brought the DOC worker to the residents, you know, I just wonder if that's maybe not an option, because that would address the female population and the male population. So now we don't have to have on the rare instance that this happens, we don't have, I mean, and I say rare, it happens probably a dozen times a year. We don't, and not just for me, I'm thinking for the Southern half of the state, we would have a person that is specifically trained, you know, and maybe they're in pairs, maybe it's two people that are essentially charged with caring, you know, and I don't wanna say containing, but making sure this juvenile is safe and not in a police station and not in a hotel and not at the hospital until we can figure out what the longer-term solution is. I think I did understand the idea behind, you know, not maintaining woodside for, you know, because it got a little bit of a mixed purpose, right? We were trying to use some of the beds for treatment and some of the beds for detention and we were maintaining this, you know, whole facility with all these folks. And I've talked a lot with Beth about it, because of course she was there right at the, as they were closing. And so anyway, those are my thoughts. I think there are a lot of ways to kind of think outside the box and try to come up with creative solutions. What I don't think we're gonna do, we're not gonna make this population go away. We need to have something that is a temporary, safe, secure placement for those youth that we just have no place for. I didn't mean to shut Diane Wheeler off, but you sound to be both in agreement on the need. But yeah, I'm not sure. I didn't catch the beginning of Diane's presentation. I mean, we don't see it come up a super amount. And like I said, we're doing quite a bit to, because we have the two facilities, we're really trying to do more to divert people. You know, I don't wanna charge someone who's in custody of DCF for being an unmanageable with then being unmanageable in their program. Like that just, so it has to really rise to another level. Maybe I could ask Commissioner Brown, if the contract with Sanunu Center in New Hampshire would allow short term placement. Yes, our contract is open-ended in terms of how long we place a youth there. So there's not a time limit, whether it's for a week or seven weeks or seven months. So it has flexibility. So the kid that Diane Wheeler identified and Erica's spoken about, could potentially go to Sanunu? Yes, and you know, and our team internally is working on the referral protocol to make sure that there's a process for state's attorneys to be aware of how we can refer youth and receive court approval to put a youth there, just as they would in Woodside. But we are close to finalizing that and that should be rolled out to the state's attorneys pretty soon, just so they're aware of how our internal mechanism to coordinate with the SUNU new program and the local team to make sure that that process is seamless and can move as quickly as possible. Diane, did you want to comment on that or both of you? Yes, I did, Senator. The one concern that the state has and is that in order to send a child out of the state of Vermont without a parent and a child's agreement specifically is you need a court order. So you need a court hearing. So that the 2 a.m. incident where a law enforcement gets called to a serious domestic assault or sex assault, those situations are not going to allow that juvenile to be sent out of state to SUNU know that night. They need a hearing before that can happen. So the question is for that short term, as Erica said, where do they go? Well, I put my hat on as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and say that more of the reasons for the closure of Woodside was a $6 million bill for one to two kids. And yes, it was, but keep in mind, Senator, that also during that time so what don't we spend if we spend that $6 million in general? Well, I didn't hear the last part you. What don't we fund if we spend $6 million for two kids and generally, you know, Woodside setting? Well, the two kids that were there and one of mine was, I had one there myself at that time is the law had changed where the judge could only send a juvenile to Woodside with DCF's permission and acquiescence. And that's what changed the numbers at Woodside is that the state's attorney, the judge couldn't send them. So while to answer the- You haven't answered my question about what you do with the $6 million and what don't you spend on if you take that $6 million and put it somewhere else? I understanding is that Newberry's cost is about $5 million. Is that correct? I don't think so. We anticipate it's less than that. I think it's two and a half million. The three million, correct? Two and a half to three million. Yeah, so if I could just jump in here, I would say that both deputy state's attorney Wheeler and a state's attorney, Marthridge, you know have brought up some very important points. And specifically to the points that Erica brought up in some of her outside of the box suggestions. You know, those are the conversations we're having internally. You know, we recognize that certainly there's always areas to improve and provide a better service to some of our youth with more challenging behaviors. And so we're actually having those similar conversations and working to in line with the suggestions she made about is there a short-term setting that we can create in-state with a high level of expertise that's very short-term for youth with really aggressive behaviors. You know, where we have specialized contractors, you know, working with those youth until a longer-term plan, how to serve that youth in a more long-term manner can be developed. And, you know, we recognize there's improvements to be made in the system. I think, Diane, actually what you were adding up there was the operating cost will be about two and a half to three million. There is a two million something line item that would go to the construction to help rebuild the facility. That's a one-time expense. And I appreciate, Senator Commissioner Brown's statements. And I just, it's very passionate that it's the emergencies that are having kids spend time in the police departments at the emergency room. And, you know, even the youthful offenders, the kids that are over 18 that go to juvenile court on, you know, misdemeanor crimes. I know I hate to see a transient kid out there in the cold when we can't, we can't arrest them. We can't bring them into DCF custody for services. So there's even another group that needs help. At this point, I'd recommend it. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Erica, thank you for the short. And if you can stay on, you're both welcome to. And did you have any further comments, Erica? Just quickly, I wondered if Commissioner Brown could, what I was thinking when I suggested that as well was that there would be some type of referral group or service or the problem that we ran into with when as Diane indicated, judges had to be the ones to order to Woodside, they're still only putting the information in a vacuum, right? Like they're getting what I know, they're getting what the police know, they're getting what a particular DCF person knows, but we're still not getting the full picture. And so sometimes I just wanna make sure if DCF is looking at alternatives in secure type settings, can we A, get how many kids a year are we talking about that were sent? And then B, were they all similarly situated? Were they all kids that needed to be ordered to Woodside or was it just a situation where we kinda threw up our hands at two in the morning and said, well, Woodside. And so, if I could just throw that out there for Commissioner Brown, and I'm more than happy to talk about this at all. Like I said, I see a few folks from the Juvenile Justice Stakeholders Committee that are on this and we're having this conversation as to the older population, but I think it would be really useful for the younger population as well. Yeah, I'm happy to meet offline with you Erica and kinda continue this conversation, I think about it. That would be great. Thank you. I'm gonna shift here a little bit. Jim Henry and Jeff Karen are here from the Beckett and Seawall, but I wanted to ask Jim a question. I visited 119 River Street where there is a gap or horizon. I can't, are both there. One of them is just for one person. I'm wondering if that isn't something about what Erica was talking about at 119 River Street in Bunnings. Yeah, our horizon program is a one-bed. I got the wrong, yeah, it's not gap, it's horizon. Right. And that's one, can you talk a little bit about problems that you're seeing? You're the one that gave us the information last week about the increase in workers' cost, sharp increase in your rates because of injuries to staff. Yep. So we basically just kind of went through our audit with workers' comp. Our workers' comp went up $38,000 this year to a total of approximately 117,000 based on injuries, you know, obviously. By the way, this was at a time when we just heard yesterday in Senate appropriations about the tremendous decrease in workers' comp rates around the state. Yeah, yeah, now with us. And, you know, we have had a fair amount of injuries through the restraints. We have a couple of people out right now from restraints being injured and restraints significant injuries. So yeah, that's definitely something that has come into play. But I do want to throw out there, although we have experienced staff getting hurt through the injuries, not a single youth has been hurt through any of our restraints. Jim, when you have a kid who's acting out and destroys furniture or salt, a staff member, what is it when you take them to the hospital, what happens? Well, our mental health is not for injury. It kind of depends in a sense that, first off, it depends on what the youth is, you know, label that. If they're an adjudicated delinquent, that opens up the possibility for the secure placement with Sununu or, you know, previously Woodside. But if they're not an adjudicated individual, that really limits where they can go. Some of the situations have been where the youth has gone up there to the ECA, the Emergency Crisis Unit, has been screened and has been returned, you know, over a period of time. Might be a couple hours, might even be a day or so, based on no beds, you know, in Bratiborough. Other times, I think I can think of a couple of times where we may have switched out an individual through the Turtle Rock program where the individual they may have had there, you know, we would switch, take the person out and, you know, go with a change of scenery type possibility to see if that would work with the individuals. But it is limited what we can do with the individuals who are, you know, acting out in that manner. Can you speak to some of the staff injuries? Let's see, so probably the most significant one right now is a knee where the staff member was kicked but on the side of the knee. So that's probably our most expensive workers comp injury right now. Some of it would be, you know, trips to the ER based on being punched or, you know, getting checked out from knee injuries or something else along the, you know, through the restraint process. Let's see, we've got a couple of wrists, couple of fingers, but yeah, mostly the knee is the biggest one that stands out. The most significant, most costly to us right now. Before COVID, I dropped into 204 and I was amazed at the lack of furniture. And you, what do you do? Well, some of it is in a sense, trying to space the kids out a little bit. You know, we had the couches in there. I think we had three couches in, you know, 204. And then as some of them got damaged instead of replaced and we looked to go to more individualized chairs to kind of keep more of a separation, you know, amongst the individuals. A lot of damage, a lot of damage to the buildings. Yeah, yeah. We just had an incident where a youth did some significant damage to 204. Enough that we kind of had to close that down. COVID also kind of played a little bit into that with some staffing issues, but we basically had to move the individuals out of the 204 building into 206 so that we could fix, you know, doors and locks and things along those lines, TV. And then moving back into the building. Do you have a problem with kids that stay much longer than would be in a usual temporary setting? There are a few of the residents who, you know, have been with us for a longer period of time. Definitely can get bored, can get stale in a sense, but I do know the struggles of the placements and, you know, where these individuals can go to, which, you know, some of them are going out of state, which, you know, going through the court process that was mentioned earlier can delay. So, you know, so we do hold onto the individuals in that sense. But yeah, our typical length of stay is 30 days and it's a little higher for the girls. But there have been a handful where we've had them for, you know, a couple of months. State Attorney Wheeler said that there's no place for violent girls. I think we're pretty much yet, you know, in that sense. And our numbers for the GAP program, our girls program has been pretty high. You know, it's five beds. But, you know, as far as I see it, I see it that we are kind of the woodside for girls currently. And that has been, you know, fairly full over the last, you know, last year or so. Jeff, over at Beckett, you have girls, right? In Bennington. You talked a little bit about some of the issues you're having with the, I know you have kids from all over the, not just from Vermont, but other states, specifically to Vermont kids or problems that you're encountering. I'll allow LaRae Baker. She's our Executive Director of our Vermont School for Girls. She can answer your question. Good. Senator. Well, great. I don't see her in my screen. Hi. Hi. There you are. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you. So we certainly have girls who as a result of their traumatic experiences have aggressive adaptations as Erica well knows. It's not our practice to accept girls with a history of aggression that's significant, particularly as it relates to assaultive behavior toward others. It would be contraindicated in a facility such as ours who meets the needs of survivors of trauma. And unfortunately, there are times when this is the case and I've said, I've talked to others about this in the past when one of our girls is out of her window of tolerance and in a dissociative process, she can be just as violent and just as dangerous as any boy. We had a gal two summers ago who was probably five, 11, well north of 200 pounds who became violent in our school building and the local police helped out, thank goodness, quickly. So no one was hurt and she was able to go to Woodside. And the last girl we had who went to Woodside assaulted our residential director who's extremely strong in de-escalation strategies, but relatively significantly, he didn't need care or anything. But I would say that when our girls do act out in these ways, and I hesitate to say it without knocking on wood, we haven't had a significant one for about 17 months but who's counting, it's just as scary, just as violent as what can happen with the boys. And unlike Jim's program and thank goodness they're able to do it, it's not our practice to do that. We did establish two years ago an ERT program that allows us to meet the needs of students who have a need for a higher staffing ratio, their acuity is much higher. So we're able to meet the needs of students with significant and profound histories of self-harming behavior and suicidality. But the violence is always the place whether it's at the Vermont School for Girls or the New England School for Girls where we hit the pause button and have to ask ourselves if it's gonna be safe for our students and our staff. However, when you treat children and adolescents with complex PTSD, you always have to allow for that adaptation. And Erica has been tremendously supportive and the restorative justice program here in Bennington and really helps us tease out what girls really need another consequence because we do try to keep it in a model that's consistent with restorative justice because as she said, we don't want kids who are here for those challenges to just pick up more charges because it further complicates everything. So. You've seen an increase in workers' comparates, similar to see-all? No. I mean, our last claim was substantive to say the least. Biggest one since I've been around was last, not last September, but so it's September 2019, right, Jeff? Yeah, that would have been the last one. So it's not our experience, but we have a practice where we debrief after any situation where a staff person has any level of harm. And we certainly have had in the past three months a few of those. And we make our youth and our staff aware that at any time they absolutely can press charges. I work very closely with Cam Grandie as well locally because I think consequences are important. I think it's critical for our girls to understand the impact of their behavior. So again, I want to knock on wood, not an increase, but a substantial one 15 months ago. Cam Grandie is the lieutenant of the Bennington Museum. Other, anybody question for either Jim Henry or Laura or Jeff? Ask that. Really appreciate your being here. Or restraints up or down? Well, we look at our data every week. We have a data review meeting and again, knock on wood happily down this month and substantively over the past year. And when we examine our patterns of restraints, we find that, the data doesn't lie. And what we find is that it tends to be the same youth. So when we disaggregate that piece, it can be really helpful to look at the trends. And we look at trends across days, across times of day. It's always worse to transitions. So knock, knock down. I think that Jim testified last week or maybe at our other point, that the majority, a tremendous majority, were the same one or two kids who were restrained rather than the entirety of the population. Is that still true, Jim? Yeah, well, to your first question, our restraints are up a significant amount over last year. But yes, to your second questionnaire, your point, I think it was like 65% of the restraints that we had, 13 residents made up those 65 restraints. And what percent of those, you really? Did I say that right? 65% of those restraints were made up of 13 individuals. I'm gonna get to Marshall Paul in a minute, but Steve Howard has been writing things down and chopping at the bit and I can see him in my windows. So Steve represents the VSEA and wanted to share some of the VSEA's concern. Thank you, Senator. And I will just say that as I think everybody can agree, I'm a very poor substitute for our very able members who work for DCF. But I will let you know those who are able are watching you on YouTube and are texting me and have taken the time to answer the questions that you provided to the committee. So I'm gonna do my best to translate and provide you very briefly what some of the feedback from the folks on the front lines of the Department of Children and Families and in Family Services. I wanna just start by saying that I'm sorry to hear about what's happening with the workers' comp claims at 204 and 207. Hope I have those numbers right. Six. 206, sorry. I get lost very easily. It's not different from what our members at Woodside experienced. And yet it still I think says a lot about whether you work for DCF or you work for one of the Depot programs or for Woodside. You are often asked to put your physical health, your mental health and your life in danger to serve these youth, which they do willingly. I just wanna go through just quickly a couple of things that our members wanted to say. First of all, I think our members want to associate themselves very much with what Diane Wheeler had to say and also with Erica Marthage. During Diane's testimony, I got many text messages applauding what she had to say in the need for a secure facility. And I think clearly there is a trickle down effect of in the system and the lack of beds in the system and the lack of community resources that has been exacerbated by the closing of Woodside. There are a couple of points that they wanted to make on the mental health front. They're saying to me that it's very challenging to get a mental health screening that the mental health service agencies don't often have on-site crisis support and will disagree and argue with the social worker about whether the issue that the child is presenting is behavioral or mental health in nature. And that is very a source of great frustration for the family service worker who is there with the child and watching and seeing the behavior and understands that it's a mental health problem, but they're being told that it's not by the mental health agency that's charged with providing mental health services. They are very concerned about foster parents. Hospitalization is not approved or they don't mean the child doesn't meet the criteria. Foster parents are given a safety plan. And often the foster parents who are now with a backbone of what DCF is I think trying to build as an alternative have a very low threshold for what behaviors they're willing to accept in their home and they often refuse. And when they do, it leaves the family services worker with the responsibility for picking up the pieces. And that's when they end up in police stations and hotel rooms in parking lots in the DCF offices watching kids. They're also very concerned about the situation that occurs when children do go to the hospital. Once they get to the hospital, there are many stories of children who were, as they would describe it, warehouse in the ERs. And they describe that as five days, sometimes as high as 180 days in ERs waiting for beds in the system. They really believe very strongly that if we are gonna rely on foster parents that we have to have more skills and more resources for the foster parents. And in one of the things that is strongly stressed especially in the Northwestern part of the state, you're very blessed, I think, to have the depot programs in Bennington. And there are resources for that Erica and the folks down there have that in the Northwest they just don't exist. And so our members would ask the committee to look at what services are provided, particularly in the Northwestern part of the state. And one of the programs that used to exist is something called the High Fidelity WRAP Program. That is no longer available up in that area that provides intensive services to families who are willing to open their homes to these youth. Transports are a problem. There's no doubt about it. And one of the points that our members are making is that the length of the transport is often an issue. And so if you are able to create resources that are closer to home, like in the Northwestern part of the state, some of the transport issues may be addressed. But what they reported to me when they answered your question is that it's incredibly difficult to find sheriffs to transport during the day and at night that they can call every transporter in the entire state at least once and probably again. And again, due to the lack of programs in the Northern part of the state the transport is almost always to Bennington. They have some other resources for transportation but they say that they're not appropriate for some of the high, they're not secure transports for some of the high risk youth. So those are just some, on those two issues I think what one of the things that they want to stress is there just aren't enough beds, there's not enough community resources. And I think they would say, read again what Diane Wheeler had to say and considering what's lacking in the system. Yeah, I appreciate that. Representative Pew, did you have a comment? Did you have a question for Steve or? You're muted. I just, I wanted to thank Steve and I had the pleasure of listening to probably close to 70 employees last night and that was what I heard. It's perhaps not specifically to Steve and I had to step out of the meeting briefly before. As people talk about, and some of the, I think it was Jim and then Eric or some, we're talking about they no longer, there was that Woodside was the stop, Woodside was the backstop. It was perhaps my erroneous perspective that for youth to go to Woodside, they had to be delinquent and that not all youth who become aggressive and out of control in fact are delinquent but in fact got into placement because of trauma because of other kinds of situations. So I guess for me maybe to focus solely on do we need a Woodside? I need to be, I think we need clarity is do we need a place for juveniles who are aggressive and or do we need the capacity for children and youth who come into the state's responsibility but not as delinquents? I think actually you kind of hit the nail in the head represent to read what's going on. I think question isn't not whether we need Woodside like that, that's gone, there's no point in going over it. The question is, how can we better coordinate the services for these kids to better protect the communities than obviously the folks that deal with it? This transport issue is not, I wouldn't dismiss that at all and how do we get that kid from the foster home, let's say or the emergency room or whoever it is to the appropriate place? And it may be that the Department of Children and Families, Department of Mental Health and even the Department of Corrections all within the Agency of Human Services need better coordination to get where we need to get. I think there are violent kids, no question about it. There always have been, that's not going away but have we lost the ability to deal with them? I think that's what some folks are questioning particularly Diane Wheeler. Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say what I heard from some of the state employees was the issue of transportation is tied to lack of services in the sense that we, from what they were telling me there aren't enough of certain kinds of overnight beds so that if acuity increases, if I start acting out in a way that I'm going to need something that only can be addressed in Bennington County then someone who is doing better but probably could have stayed a bit longer if we tried. So that there is, we're moving people prematurely and part of that is we need to find space so we need to move one person out and one person in. So that also doubles the need for transportation. And I wanna say as a representative of Bennington County the fact that we have these programs here I think is a testament to the community's openness. Many communities would not accept these types of programs and as the one, as the SEA and the Seawall it was not an easy thing to get a program started and when you try to start a program in many communities they reject it. And I think that Bennington Ramon School for Girls I'm gonna get that right eventually, Jeff. Actually has three group homes within I'm gonna say half a mile of my home. One's in my backyard, one's just up the hill from me and the other one's across the street from the one up the hill. And we do not have problems with it as a neighbor. And I know down in Depot I've had recently there were quite a few police cars there some of the neighbors were concerned about it. That was one particular incident. So by and large they're good neighbors but most communities have not been as welcoming as the Bennington community has. And hopefully Newberry will be as welcoming. I'm sorry that it takes a long time to get to Bennington from St. Albans or wherever. And that's kind of what's developed over the years. And Commissioner Brown, if you'd stopped stealing the staff from these programs, somebody mentioned that staff thing had changed at Seahaw when they were, I do know that that staff member did taken by DCS. Yeah, our manager of our boys program took as now a social worker in Bennington. Well, it's certainly going to have those partnerships between our district office and our elected programs. Senator, if I could just... Yeah, now they're state employees. Right, that's great. We're very happy to have that. One thing I just wanted to add that people wanted me to say is that they don't disagree with what either you or Representative Pugh said. We need something. And they also said it should be something that to your point that it's harder to get into, it was harder to get into Woodside than Harvard. That the resource doesn't matter if you can't use it. So they're with you on that point if we're gonna have something that's secure, that it needs to be something that's actually accessible. I get one of the frustrations and I think the Department of Mental Health is still on Commissioner Squirrel. One of the things that I know is frustrated many folks both in DCF as well as is the inability to get somebody into the retreat. Marshall Paul, last, I think the last of our witness list, but not the least, obviously. Thank you, Senator. Commissioner Squirrel, did you wanna comment on my comment about getting into the retreat? No, I think that I understand the concern and certainly right now feel the pressure around accessing that resource. I just wanted to note to the committee that I do have to hop off to other testimony at 1030. So I just wanted to thank everyone for the opportunity. I'm sure Marshall wouldn't mind if you had any final comments that you wanted to make. No, just I think we're asking all the right questions. I appreciate everyone's thoughtfulness around this because I agree from the community perspective, it can feel like it doors to the same room. And I think it's our job here at the Agency of Human Services to ensure that we're providing timely access, integrated care and services and collaboration. So I think this conversation has given me a lot to think about. I am trying to focus on the solutions that we can try to bring in there. I do think mobile response is important. The other thing I would add to, particularly for transition age youth, we do notice that our CRT program, Community Rehabilitation Treatment and Support, some challenges in engaging some of those transition age youth who might be transitioning to adulthood in those mental health services. So I also do see that as an opportunity area the Department of Mental Health to focus on. And of course, we're happy to continue to engage in any of these kinds of discussions to try to strengthen the system of care. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you very much. You too, sir. Marshall? Thank you, Senator. So just to start by way of introduction because I know there's some people in this hearing who haven't been part of prior hearings. I'm Marshall Paul. I'm the Chief Juvenile Defender and Deputy Defender General. And actually relevant to this conversation, before I went to law school, I was not at the high level that everybody else in this hearing is. But I was a behavioral interventionist. I worked in a bunch of different programs just due to some oddities in the way that I was hired. I was used essentially as fill-in support for whatever program most needed somebody who was restraint and escort trained. So I have quite a bit of experience dealing with very aggressive kids, both through my representation of those kids as a lawyer and also prior to my role as a lawyer in programs working with those kids' hands on. And I wanted to start by, because I think there's been a lot of discussion that's been really important and really has covered a lot of the ground. A lot of the things that I would like to talk about, but one of the things that I don't think has really been brought up is anything that provides some sort of context to this conversation outside of the state of Vermont. As Chief Juvenile Defender, I'm in regular contact with my counterparts, Chief Juvenile Defenders, from all over New England and also from all over the country. And that's dealing both with the juvenile... Just one second. Representative Pugh has to leave and I want her to just let you know. I had Marcia. Thank you. So that's not only dealing with the juvenile justice population, but also with the nationally, they would always call it the child protective or the abused and neglected population. In Vermont, we call it the chins population. And one thing that I can say is, you know, I am in regular contact with my counterparts all over the country. And this is all that anybody is talking about right now. When you read the list serves for Juvenile Defenders all over the country, it's all conversations about the way that the pandemic has affected the ability to get kids in and out of placements in a timely manner. And it's affected, and that's really a lot of what we're talking about here. I mean, I think that, you know, this was framed as a conversation about how do we deal with kids who are displaying really aggressive, violent behaviors in residential settings. And everybody who's talked about it has focused on one part of the problem, which I think is appropriate, which is the responsiveness of the system when a kid's behavior does start to escalate. Is there an appropriate place for that kid to go? And can that transition be made quickly and effectively and without disrupting, you know, a whole bunch of some other program, you know, is it a situation where a kid needs to be moved out of one program before a kid can be moved in, that kind of thing? I think that's a really appropriate way for this conversation to go because that's really where these problems are. I mean, the problems that we're talking about, transportation is a huge problem. The number of these cases that have escalated to the point of charges. So I've ended up seeing the paperwork and I've ended up sort of looking back at what happened. In a lot of those cases, there's an effort made by a program or by a foster parent to try to address a problem that they can see coming, but they're unable to address it because they can't get a transport because there's no placement available. And it may be something where that transport is a few hours away or a placement is a few days away, but that's not fast enough. These situations escalate very quickly and it's really important for a system to be really responsive. And when someone says, look, this kid's behaviors have reached a threshold that we can no longer accommodate in our program, you know, we need to have a system that can absolutely respond to that quickly and respond to that effectively. What I don't think that means is that doesn't mean that we need secure beds all over the place. We don't need a new Woodside. We don't need to be putting big, because a lot of these kids were not appropriate for Woodside either. Just the fact that someone's engaging in destructive or aggressive behavior doesn't mean that what they need is a more secure placement. It may mean that they need a more appropriate placement. And what I think one of the problems that we've seen with sort of how Woodside was used in the past and how other high level placements, you know, the placements that are designed for those high risk, high needs kids is that they're often sort of treated as an automatic ratcheting up where anytime a kid in a program behaves, you know, kid who's in a foster home behaves aggressively, that automatically results in them being placed in a more restrictive placement. Aggressive behavior there results in placement in a more restrictive placement. And we would see those kids accumulate at Woodside, even though really honestly, it was in a lot of cases, the placements were just inappropriate and kids who would behave aggressively at Woodside would actually, we'd see significant reductions in their aggressive behavior when they left Woodside. I remember actually two times when I had had staff at Woodside really upset that I had managed to get a kid out of Woodside, a kid who had wanted to get out of Woodside, I was advocating for them to get out of Woodside and I was successful at that. And I'm not suggesting that the Woodside staff's response was inappropriate, they just felt that, you know, with given that kid's behavior, there was going to be, you know, self-harm that that kid was gonna hurt themselves or hurt someone else if they were removed from that very restrictive, very intensive program for high need, high risk kids. And yet when they were actually removed from the program, the behavior vanished. I mean, kids who had had, you know, one girl that I remember who had some of the most profound and disturbing self-harming behaviors that I had ever seen any kid engage in. And there was a lot of concern when she was leaving Woodside. And yet when she moved to a different program, to a less restrictive program, an out-of-state program that was really specialized in trauma-informed care and in treating the post-traumatic stress disorder that she had, she had no more instances of self-harm. I actually run into her, she's back in state. She's aged out of the system. I run into her pretty much every time I go to court in St. Albans, or not St. Albans, I'm sorry, St. Johnsbury. I run into her in downtown St. Johnsbury. So I think the idea that we have a system that needs to be more responsive and that needs to have appropriate placements that are available on a very prompt basis is correct. But I think the idea that what that means is that we need more secure beds, more high-level placements, more placements with higher levels of security isn't necessarily the case. And so just to touch on a few of these things, the appropriateness of the placement, I think also there's been these questions about when is a kid charged for aggressive behavior or when is a kid subject to being moved for aggressive behavior? And the problem with that question is that the answer is always it depends. It depends on the programs. It depends on the kid. It depends on the milieu. And I think the important thing is for every program to be able to draw a line and say, this is the type of behavior that we are not gonna tolerate from this kid in this instance, in this milieu. And when they draw that line to have that line respected, so that when they say, look, this kid's behavior has escalated to a point that's no longer appropriate for this program, that they get moved quickly. And just to sort of give you an example of what that means, there's kids, the response to a kid, for example, who destroys some furniture. And you can see that that destruction is an escalation of behavior that started down here and is escalating up to here and this destruction of furniture is right here. That demands one type of response. Whereas a kid who destroys some furniture after getting horrible news, like that they're not gonna go home, like that their parents parental rights have been terminated, like that they will be, any type of the kind of news that kids who are in these programs get all the time, that triggers a kid who may not have been engaging in those kinds of behaviors to then do something destructive, do something aggressive, that may be, even though there's a two identical behaviors in the same program, those may demand very different responses because they're very different kids acting maybe in the same way, but for very different reasons. And so I think that's gotta be part of the conversation too. There's no cookie cutter to this. There's no one size fits all approach. Different programs have different reasons for tolerating different levels of behavior. And I think part of the important thing is to ensure, especially as DCF moves, I think very appropriately to try to keep as many of these kids as possible in the most home-like community-based settings as possible. I think part of the equation is just making sure that we're responding appropriately to the behavior. One of the things, when I started doing work at Woodside, Woodside was nearly always almost full. They tried to keep the population down to around 25. So there was enough room in there to fit kids who were coming in on an emergency basis, but their maximum population was 30 and they were often up to 30. And one of the things that used to fill up Woodside and doesn't anymore, and it's a really, it's a good thing, is we used to have kids who were brought in for stuff that would have never resulted in detention or a justice system response if they were in their home, but it did result in that when they were in a foster home. So for example, I have a 16-year-old daughter. If she gets mad at me and slams the door so hard that it breaks the hinges or breaks the door knob, not that she would do that, but if she did, our response would not be to call the police and have her charged. Our response would be to take away her phone and make her fix the door and ground her for a few weeks. But if a kid's in foster care, it used to be the practice that in a lot of cases, when a kid engaged in that kind of behavior, which is really very normative adolescent behavior. I mean, there's no kid out there that doesn't unlawfully destroy property at some time in their adolescence and probably throughout their adolescence. It seems to be what adolescents do is unlawfully destroy property. But so we would see kids coming into Woodside who had engaged in that type of normative adolescent behavior. But because they did it in a foster home, it became a justice system issue rather than an issue that would be dealt with in the home. That's one of the ways that sort of those placements at Woodside changed. It vastly reduced the number of kids at Woodside and it did so very appropriately. Like the fact that there's not as many kids in these high level secure placements is not a bad thing. It means that what we're making is more appropriate placements. And I think the testimony today reflects that what we really need to be doing is developing that middle system of placements, those placements for kids who may not demand a fully secure, fully locked environment because that's a very small number of kids for whom there's already a plan in place. It's developing a series of middle tier placements for kids who are of moderate risk, moderate need, they don't need fully secure setting. But whether there's enough of those placements where for kids who are inappropriate in one placement, we can find the placement that's right for them and do it quickly and move them quickly. Well, I disagree with you, I think that over the years, I've seen a trend where it's trying to fit square pegs into round holes or vice versa. And that's part of what you can't add. I always said you can't ask a program to be all things to all people. And sometimes I think we do. And I think that's part of the problem. I take what you said, I actually wrote it down Marshall, I thought it was a good summary of this issue is it's critical of the system to be able to respond responsibly and quickly the needs of the kids. And I think that's really summarizes where we need to move and we need to, I don't expect it will work, but hopefully the commissioners of mental health and DCF and maybe corrections can get together and talk about how to provide this. Because many of these kids come from homes where perhaps the one parent is in jail, one parent is involved with the mental health system or some of the abuse system. And the kids are in DCF custody and may or may not have been removed from all. I think that there needs to be better coordination also. You can't find the right program until there's been some stabilization. And that's where the 204s and 206s gaps and horizons and other programs come in. And those programs providing that stabilization when it gets so violent that you need something as Diane Wheeler spoke to or not been spoke to. I think that's where I'm hopeful the department will look at what is that? What is that that, maybe it's only one kid every two months that needs something like cement that can be held for their own protection. Erica, did you wanna comment a little bit on some of this? You're only asking that because I just emailed, I just messaged Dick that I don't wanna say it but I actually agree with Marshall, so. That's just horrible. Which weirdly is happening more and more but at least on the juvenile issues. So yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that he, it's true. If we could get just what Senator, just what you just said, there's gonna be a couple cases here and there that I think we need a higher level of interaction. But I mean, absolutely right. These are the kinds of things that we would just punish our kids at home for, right? My son slams his door. Well, I take the door off the hinges for a couple of days. And now that seems to solve it. But when we're in a situation where we have someone already in and we have to deal with the safety of employees, we have to deal with the police responding repeatedly. We just have to come up with something else. And I think a home setting or something as close to a home setting that is secure and safe for both the people working there, but for the juvenile on a short-term basis because it is the calls in two in the morning that create the issue. It's not, if it's during the workday, we almost always can problem solve a way to address the issue. I appreciate that, Eric. I cut in the middle of your remarks, Marshall, but I think they were, I think they were cutting us in a direction. And I think I was pretty much wrapped up. I mean, I think the only other things I would say is I agree largely with Erica. I, even though I've certainly disagreed with Stephen Howard on a lot of his concerns around the closure of Woodside, I actually agree with him on his concerns around the availability of transports, the interaction between DCF and DMH and the need for well-trained, what I would call therapeutic foster homes and for intensive wrap services. Those have been very successful. And I know that DCF has been expanding, particularly their more skilled foster workers, the availability of those. And I think those are a real important part of the solution. I will say as far as the retreat goes, I mean, I've certainly experienced my share of frustrations with how kids are moved in and out of the retreat. You know, I remember having kids at Woodside who would be at Woodside and immediately go into a state of crisis. They would be screened into the retreat and stabilized there for a few days, returned to Woodside, immediately go into a state of crisis, be screened back into the retreat. And you know, I think the girl I'm thinking of went through that transition like three times before Woodside just decided they weren't going to screen her into the retreat anymore, which I don't actually think was necessarily the appropriate response, but was a response to the fact that, you know, screening into the retreat had not been working because it was just this sort of back and forth, back and forth. And those transitions are really hard on kids. I mean, that's one of the things that I've seen a lot of with my clients who are getting charged or getting probation violations or just simply getting in trouble for behavior in placements is a lot of it revolves around transitions, which a lot of times are out of those kids' hands. You know, I've had kids who have been sort of emergency transitioned from one program to another just to make space in that program who have then really decompensated because they've been moved from one program to another without any notice, without any preparation, without any planning. And they're just sort of picked up from a place that they've called home for months and dropped into a new place without a lot of explanation. And that's resulted in, you know, increases in their level of aggression, increases in really maladaptive behavior and them winding up, you know, picking up charges or VOPs as a result. So I think it is, you know, it's, I can't stress enough how critical it is to have a really well-developed system of care at all levels from, you know, from the foster care level, or even, you know, I think it was important for that Stephen Howard talked about wrap services, which often are a way to keep kids out of foster care entirely and to be able to keep them in their own home and provide them with support that their parents can't provide, but without having to have them outside of their home. So I think that's all I have on that answer question. Anybody else who would like to make some comments at this point, any of the folks who's witnesses or Senate committee members who have comments to make? Mr. Brown? Yeah, unfortunately I do have to run to testify in House Human Services. And I just wanted to thank everyone for their testimony today. And I also just wanted to say thank you to Steve. You know, we are working closely with BSEA and our staff, you know, they are closest to the ground to, you know, and so their feedback is critical here. And so we've been, you know, working with BSEA and taking their concerns. And then also they've been sharing some ideas around high fidelity wraps and other things. And we're working through those suggestions right now. And hopefully we can implement many of them because I agree, you know, that we do need to provide some additional supports to our foster kids and to our staff and to the system. And I look forward to continuing this conversation, you know, with all of our partners on this, because I think it will take all of us working together, you know, to provide a better system for our kids. So I do appreciate the opportunity today. And what I'd like to do is to reassemble this group week after town meeting and get an update of where we're at. We'll know a little bit more, I think. Hopefully we'll be able to look at what things need to be in the budget, what things need to change in the statute. How do we best approach this? And Diane and Erica have been excellent. And also maybe giving us time to Senator White, myself and Sheriff Mark, I'm sure, see if we can't get the transport system and be more nimble to get the kid from St. Albans to Rattleboro, Rattleboro, St. Albans and going to Newberry or wherever it might be. Please, I'm not short crouched. It may be that we have to think outside and watch. That would be my suggestion, right? Steve, I don't know if you have any further remarks or if you've got more texts. So isn't this nice that we live in a world where we get textuals? Yeah, this morning I didn't know what a high fidelity wrap is. I'm doing it now, I've been studying most of the morning, getting a quick education from our members. I think that's what you provide, Tilly, or Tilly provides for you. That's the name of your dog. Yeah, well, right, I mean, she probably would eat it if I had it. But I'll just say that I knew this day would come. I knew Marshall would see the light eventually and agree with me. And I look forward to working. Our members do look forward to working with Commissioner Brown. There's a substantial amount of work to do, but I think they're willing to roll up their sleeves and make those changes happen. Any committee members or comments or questions? What the next step might be? Jim and Laura and Jeff, you're certainly important partners in this. And just because I represent you in the Senate, that's not the only reason I'm saying that. It's just that you're providing that stabilization and you're providing the shoes. And I think what I, beyond what Marshall said, I think we also have to recognize the impact on all of this, on your ability to provide. Staffing, for example, programs. The number of kids who come in, Commissioner Brown, you've had to hold up on some of the kids entering programs because of the COVID issues, to reduce the number of entrances. Again, I think we need to also recognize that's been important. This is Robert. I appreciate you all. Thank you. Mitty, any other comments? Alice, you worked in this. Jeanette, you have the retreat in your district. And Joe, your defense attorney, Senator Ruef. Anybody comments? So just many of the same problems exist right here and now that we're existing 20 years ago and I worked for DCF for a number, for a long, long time. And the opioid crisis has, of course, and now COVID has had a big impact. But really the issues still remain that were there that long ago and continue. I think there's maybe some new ideas with regard to treatment, which is good to hear. And it's a lot of people struggling and a lot of the people caring for them struggling. There was one, perhaps Commissioner Brown remembers from his other experience, there used to be specialized foster homes who would, it was kind of like some people talked about a place where instead of going into a residential placement, you could go into one of those very specialized. There were only a few of them around the state, but they seemed to work. I don't know if any of them still exist or not. Yeah, I think that they were referred to as therapeutic foster homes, a higher level of foster home. And we are looking at trying to expand the capacity of, I think there might be a one or two still out there, but I think that's an area where we're looking to expand our capacity for sure in the system. Thank you. Senator White. I was just going to comment on the need for different approaches to treatment. And I don't know if this is the case that Marshall was talking about, but there was, I do know of a girl who was bounced back and forth between the retreat and Woodside. And Woodside staff, it was a difference between approach. And Woodside staff insisted that she needed a higher level of care. So she was sent to the retreat. The retreat did not feel that she needed that. They sent her back. Ultimately, the retreat said, we're not going to do it anymore and she should go live with her grandmother. And there was a huge outcry from the staff at Woodside who said, she's dangerous. She can't go live with her grandmother. And they did because they had no alternative. They sent her to live with her grandmother and she's been fine ever since. Her level of trauma went down because she wasn't, every time she went to Woodside, she, the adrenaline rush was there and she experienced that trauma again. And then, so we do need alternatives and we do need to look at the individual person instead of like Marshall said, just having steps. So I just wanted to comment on that. Joe. So just to let the committee know, institutions had a fairly lengthy conversation on Wednesday about a portion of this conversation with a facility that is in the planning works right now for Newbury, Vermont. It would handle six beds as a replacement of sorts for Woodside, but it's only to handle the male population. And so the conversation continues, but I just wanted the committee to know we've been having fairly lengthy conversations and institutions about this particular facility and if all goes well, the hope is that it will be up and running before the end of the year. Thank you. I, Bryn and Peggy, if we can arrange for a similar meeting the week after meeting. Diane and Erica and others, I appreciate the testimony and how do we provide that for the most serious violent kids to protect them in the community and others, is there a way to work with DCF and Sununu or even department corrections? And as we start to see 18 and 19 year olds in the adult system, that's another area. I mean, in the juvenile system with the raise the age legislation, are we prepared for that as well? It's another part of that conversation that we need to have. Maybe in March, we can, and Bryn, if you could remind us of the raise the age and a little bit before the March conversation. And I'll talk a little bit about what we're doing there. And because I fear that some kid will have some huge problem that will become the cause of that to go backwards. I don't know that there's any necessarily, there may be appropriations issues that need to be dealt with on the transverse. I really think that's, I really think that's an area that's find out. I don't know if Commissioner Brown, you have other things in terms of budget wise that we can work through those family services. We just received a request to review some appropriations language for the BAA regarding some new additional services in response to the conversation we're having today. And so we're reviewing that and we'll be responding back with our thoughts on those appropriation requests. Well, three members of this committee are on Senate appropriations. Actually, we're a quorum of this committee when we meet in appropriations. I never thought of that.