Last week, the Office of the Child Advocate, an independent watchdog for children in the state’s care, released a report detailing new allegations of abuse and neglect of children at the Sununu Youth Services Center, the state-run secure juvenile facility.
The facility, formerly known as the Youth Development Center, or YDC, has been at the center of more than 2,000 claims of abuse over several decades.
The report, dated March 30, alleges that children at the Sununu Youth Services Center had described living in extended periods of lockdown, where they were forbidden from going outdoors. The report also alleges a child was held in an illegal prone restraint, resulting in a broken bone.
Since the report, the state health department and Attorney General’s office have announced their own investigations. At an Executive Council meeting this week, the state health department also announced that two staff members at the center had been injured at work in January.
New Hampshire’s child advocate Cassandra Sanchez spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Barnett about her office’s report.
Transcript
So it was a call of concern from a child at the facility that led to this report. Why was it that a child was the first one to report these concerns? Were there safeguards that failed there?
Interestingly enough, the child who was calling us to the facility wasn't calling about the specific concerns that we identified. They were calling about other concerns that they had about issues at the facility and were requesting assistance. We had no idea that we would be walking into what we did.
What I think the importance of that highlights is that these are children, who have been sent by a court order to this facility, and they don't necessarily know that the way in which they're being treated is unacceptable care, is not the treatment focus required by law, right? They're kids. They don't know what the laws say. So we weren't getting calls from kids about that specifically because they didn't know what was happening shouldn't have been happening.
So this facility has a long history of abuse and harm toward children in its care. And the state has sought to reform that in recent years. But this report shows new allegations of abuse and punitive conditions. What is allowing this to still happen?
And I think it's important to point out what you did, which is the progress that had been made, the changes to law to ensure that we were looking at this from a treatment lens, understanding that these are children going to the facility with a lot of trauma. So when we're uncovering this, we're not uncovering something that we feel has been ongoing for years and years. What we're seeing is almost a backpedaling from reforms that were made in the facility.
And to dive a little bit deeper on that in the report, one of the comments you got from a child was them saying, “We are in jail now.” You also listed a concern that there's more of a correctional mindset driving the facility — and that seems to contradict what you're talking about — state efforts in recent years to focus on treatment rather than on juvenile corrections. How do you think this theme is still persisting?
I think there's always been a long standing battle in the facility where there is clinical leadership, and there is more of what would be the, I guess, safety and security focused leadership. Unfortunately, in this time frame that we're looking at, there had been changes of leadership. So there had been a loss of a director, a time without a director, a new director coming in. Changes in leadership can always create instability, so I think that's really what led to some of the changes that are happening.
What we're really focusing on is meeting with leadership at DCYF [Division for Children, Youth and Families], who directly oversee the facility with the new director of the facility, and ensure that they are all on board with pushing forth that treatment-focused approach first, right? Because when you are hitting the mark with treatment and are meeting the needs of kids, the need for higher safety protocols reduces. But if we're not having that balance where we're letting that treatment team guide the programing in the facility, then we're going to see the need to have safety and security folks stepping in at a higher frequency. We can see them needing to change programming to allow for more safety and protections. Unfortunately, when you change programming with that safety mindset, it often leads to a more restricted state for kids and it doesn't necessarily keep in mind their treatment needs, their mental health, those aspects.
So it all really starts with this treatment mindset.
Yes it does. We were very fortunate in this state to have had that buy-in. So now it's ensuring that this new director coming in can guide the staff to prioritize treatment first, even if there is some fear and some worry that safety isn't being looked into. So now how do we focus on that programing not be so safety focused and the programing truly be guided by the needs of the children.
Cassandra, your office shrank by nearly half last July when the new state budget went into effect. How has that affected your office's ability to monitor situations like this?
It's really made it difficult. As you mentioned, [we have] only five staff. We do have a very large jurisdiction, which is the entire state's child welfare, juvenile justice [and] placement of children. It's reduced our ability to monitor incidents in real time on a consistent basis.
We don't have a lawyer on staff. As we're digging in right now into a full investigation, part of it is: are legal actions happening or are there loopholes in the law that allow this to happen? And not having that legal expert on our team to give it that lens complicates our ability to give that as full of a legal analysis as it deserves.
Especially when we're talking about child safety, we want to be extremely responsive and we want to ensure that changes happen swiftly. So I see the urgency on behalf of the public because they are aware, but I also at the same time want to acknowledge that we don't want to provide a rushed response and not do the thorough job that this deserves.
What do you think needs to happen right now to ensure the safety and proper treatment of children at the facility as these investigations are ongoing? And does the state have the resources to do that?
For one, I am aware that staffing at the facility does have an impact on the way in which they are operating at times. It's ensuring that the staff who are there in the facility have the tools to feel confident in their role to maintain safety while also meeting the needs of children. So I think there is an opportunity for more robust, trauma-informed treatment, more opportunities for engagement in treatment planning processes, so really enhancing those aspects, I think are the first initial steps.
Then we're also looking into what they're doing for restraint training. Looking into the training that they're using currently, it feels very militant, very law enforcement, correction based. Ideally at this point where we've made such progress to move towards a treatment focus, we'd like to see a facility like this using the same type of restraint training that our residential facilities across the state use. So let's learn from what's working well and not just try to reinvent the wheel and hope for the best.
Governor Kelly Ayotte has directed the state Attorney General to investigate your findings. Given that this facility is state-run and the Attorney General essentially represents the state health department, how can the Attorney General conduct an independent investigation into this?
I'm not quite sure I can answer that one for you. But what I can say is that none of that stops the independent investigation that we are doing. We understand that our office is very uniquely situated where we do have independence, where we are mandated to be impartial.
We are more than willing to collaborate with others who are looking at this issue and want to know where we found certain information, how to request it [or] how to access it. But ultimately, our report will be its own independent report for that very reason. So I think there may be a couple of different groups working on the same thing and it will be interesting to see if we have the same findings at the end of the day.
