Advocates say Vermont lacks reliable data on restraints, urge standardized reporting and stricter rules

The Office of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate told the House Human Services Committee on March 1, 2025, that Vermont lacks reliable, standardized data about the use of restraint and seclusion on children in the custody of the Department for Children and Families (DCF) and urged the Legislature to require clearer reporting and stronger protections.

The lack of usable data makes it impossible to know how frequently children in DCF custody are restrained or secluded, said Matthew Bernstein, Child, Youth and Family Advocate for the State of Vermont, as he reviewed a handout summarizing his office's findings and the short-form draft of H.30. "Current law is inadequate," Bernstein said, adding that under the founding statute DCF is required to notify the advocate's office of instances of restraint and seclusion but the information received so far is incomplete. "DCF has reported the restraint of just 58 children and the seclusion of 0 children," Bernstein said.

Why it matters: committee members and advocates said poor reporting hampers efforts to prevent harm and to improve care across residential, educational and medical settings where children in custody may be placed.

Advocates described the state's reporting as a patchwork: DCF has sent spreadsheet exports rather than original incident reports; the Office of the Advocate received its first dataset only in 2025 and has not had time to analyze it; and licensing regulations, reporting forms and information technology do not reliably capture consistent details such as who was injured, whether incidents were resident-on-resident or staff-on-resident, and which specific restraint modality was used. Bernstein said incident spreadsheets often contain…