Vermont officials are giving up on a two-year effort to secure federal funding for the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Colchester, Vt., likely accelerating a major change in how the state deals with some of its most troubled youths.
Ken Schatz, commissioner of the Department for Children and Families, informed staff at the facility of the decision earlier this month by email. He held a meeting on Wednesday to answer questions from employees.
“This was a very difficult decision to make,” Schatz said in the email. “I want to be clear that we have no plans to close Woodside. We are thoughtfully considering different options.”
Woodside is a 30-bed facility for youths aged 10 to 18. A state Agency of Human Services report to the Legislature last year said most of the youths there have “exhibited aggressive and assaultive behavior,” and had “intensive clinical needs.”
The state had been trying to make staffing, legal and administrative changes to the Woodside facility so that it would meet the federal government’s criteria for a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility Provider, which would then make it eligible for $2.6 million in Medicaid funding.
Plans to hire additional staff to meet those requirements will be put on hold, Vermont Secretary of Human Services Al Gobeille said. Current staffing levels will remain unless the department decides to start moving children out of the facility, he added.
“This thing is really in flux right now,” Gobeille said. “We’ve got some really big decisions to make between the administration and the Legislature here.”
DCF and AHS already had been recommending that Vermont close Woodside, to move to a program and facilities that “serve youth in a more appropriate therapeutic setting,” consistent with the changes required by Medicaid, according to the AHS report.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has indicated that despite the changes to Woodside shifting the focus to treatment, the facility does not meet their standards for a rehabilitative entity.
“They’re willing to pay for a treatment facility for substance use, but not willing to pay for a correctional facility,” Gobeille said. “It didn’t go the way we wanted it to go, that’s for sure,” he said of the CMS decision.
That means that lawmakers and members of the administration will need to hash out a plan in the coming months to either change how Woodside is used, or move juveniles into a new facility that meets Medicaid standards.
“I think the Legislature was very clear with us,” Gobeille said. “If we couldn’t get and keep federal funding, they want a different solution of what we should do.”
Vermont has made significant changes over the past decade to how it deals with youth who run afoul of the law, sending more of them to social programs and treatment and fewer of them to detention facilities like Woodside.
The total number of admissions into Woodside dropped to 89 individuals in 2017 from 143 individuals in 2015, according to an AHS report to the Legislature. The ratio of males to females — 80 percent to 20 percent — has remained steady over that time.
Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, chairwoman of the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee, said that even with juvenile justice reform, there still is a need for a place like Woodside to house some youth who can’t function in a normal environment or who committed violent crimes.
But that place can’t be Woodside, at least not in its current form, she said. Emmons said legislative commissions and state agencies involved with juvenile justice have some big questions awaiting them in the coming legislative session.
“How do we go forward for needs of our juveniles? And what would the number of beds be for a facility, and what would programming be?” she said.
Emmons said she wasn’t surprised that Medicaid had pulled the plug on Woodside despite the state’s efforts to come into line with federal standards.
“It’s more of a disappointment,” she said, “and an ‘Oh, here we go again, trying to find a path forward.’ ”