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 shorthand entries (for example: "adolescent female fighting with injury, hospitalization, psychiatric, PRT full floor, suicide ideation") that raise follow-up questions about injuries, sequence of interventions and how incidents informed de-escalation or care plans.

Committee members pressed for specifics and options. Representative Donahue pointed to rules that apply in psychiatric residential treatment and other licensed facilities and asked whether Vermont's residential regulations are as stringent as those psychiatric rules. Bernstein and other witnesses said they are not. "If the psychiatric regulations on when you can or can't use seclusion or restraint are more stringent than what we have for our children, I would suggest we need to put them on a par, if not stronger," said a witness identified in the record as an expert on psychiatric facilities.

Advocates offered legislative and administrative suggestions but did not present a completed bill text. Recommendations raised during the committee hearing included: - standardizing incident reporting (both content and format) and moving to a lightweight digital intake form to replace emailed PDFs and free-text spreadsheets; - creating a public dashboard summarizing aggregated incident and licensing data, with confidential details protected while enabling oversight of program quality; - legislatively banning prone restraints in all settings without exception; - revising residential treatment program regulations to remove or narrow exemptions for locked facilities and to align restraint/seclusion thresholds with psychiatric facility standards; - requiring audio on video recordings of incidents (witnesses argued audio helps licensing and investigatory review); - leveraging the experience of Vermont providers that report low or zero-use restraint policies and including anonymous youth voice in policy development.

Speakers repeatedly raised concerns about specific programs. Bernstein showed a short news clip of a nationally reported incident and cited the broader federal report "Warehouses of Neglect" to argue the harms can be severe; he also referenced local incidents and singled out a locked facility (referred to in testimony as Red Clover) and a past lawsuit involving Woodside as examples of why exemptions in current regulations deserve scrutiny. Bernstein told the committee his office had found at least one seclusion episode lasting 42 minutes for a 12-year-old child with developmental delays and said those details raised questions about supervision, debriefing, and plan-of-care changes.

On data and information technology, advocates told the committee that a new DCF comprehensive child welfare information system (CCWIS) request for proposals did not include clear requirements to collect restraint/seclusion details for the advocate's office. Bernstein said he and his staff recommended agile development and inclusion of reporting requirements, but DCF and the Agency of Digital Services pursued a different procurement approach that does not currently guarantee those fields will be included.

No formal votes or binding directions were taken at the hearing. Committee members asked DCF staff to work with the advocate's office and with the committee to clarify reporting options and to return with additional detail; Tyler Allen (Department for Children and Families) was present on the committee's schedule as the Department's contact and the committee chair said DCF would be asked to provide follow-up testimony. Witnesses said a stronger statutory standard for what must be reported and a standardized digital form would reduce confusion and underreporting.

The hearing also highlighted disparities in the oversight of different settings: schools, residential programs and psychiatric facilities are subject to different rules, and witnesses recommended aligning standards across these settings. Advocates cited national data and research showing higher risks for youth with marginalized identities, including children of color and children with disabilities.

The Office of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate emphasized that it is an independent, nonpartisan office with a statutory right to receive incident reports and to access records and facilities. Bernstein described his office as small and constrained by staffing limits, noting a five-year federal grant the office had been selected for was recently withdrawn by a state decision and that the office currently has limited capacity to review incidents and visit facilities.

What happens next: committee members said the subject requires more time. The committee requested follow-up from DCF and signaled it will continue hearings on H.30 and related regulatory and IT issues in subsequent meetings.

Ending: Advocates urged the committee to focus first on improving the quality and availability of incident data so that policymakers, providers, families and the public can better understand the scope of restraint and seclusion use and design targeted reforms. "We basically have no data," Bernstein told the committee. "We have no idea the frequency, the severity, the injuries to children that is occurring."