The board of directors of St. Mary’s Home for Children, a residential treatment center serving youth in state care, announced on Tuesday that it was shutting down the facility.
The nonprofit planned to relocate its outpatient program and school to the offices of Tides Family Services, the agency that took over some responsibilities earlier this year.
As Amanda Milkovits wrote in the Boston Globe, the closure left some families in the lurch. She spoke with The Public’s Radio morning host Luis Hernandez.
TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Catch us up first. There was a report back in January by the state’s office of the child advocate. Remind us of what it said.
Amanda Milkovits: Scathing is probably the most general word I can use for it. It covered abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, lots of runaways, general mayhem, chaos, mismanagement, and understaffing at the St. Mary’s Home for Children. And that investigation actually began in May, shortly after a teenage girl was found unresponsive from an overdose in a bathroom at St. Mary’s. So the state Child Advocate’s Office and DCYF both dove in, had separate investigations, really uncovering the same thing. So this report hits in January, becomes public. The executive director at the time immediately retires. She’d been there a long time. They bring in an interim CEO – Charles Montorio-Archer – to fix things and for four months things really did not get fixed and the problems really accelerated.
Hernandez: So why did it all of a sudden shut down? Is it because of that?
Milkovits: So in late May, DCYF is calling an urgent meeting with providers because they still have 10 children living at the facility and they need to get them out. All of the kids were taken out of there – at least the residential treatment facility – by late June. But that’s a lot of money that had been coming into St. Mary’s. DCYF told me that they had spent about $29 million in placing children in St. Mary’s since 2019. So that revenue stream is gone. They still have the school. They still have outpatient treatment, actually counseling, but that wasn’t enough. And according to St. Mary’s’ announcement on late Tuesday afternoon, they had so many financial challenges that this week they announced they were abruptly shutting down the school and shutting down the treatment [facility.] Its future, such as it is, is really uncertain.
Hernandez: And what have you heard from those families about what happens now? Were they caught off guard?
Milkovits: Oh, they were completely caught off guard. In fact, that’s how I found out that this was happening. So I heard from one of the families who said they got the letter from the current chief operating officer at St. Mary’s saying that, “I’m sorry, but we’re closing down the school and Tides is going to send you to another one of their buildings in Pawtucket. We’ll have a town hall meeting on this.” And the mother I spoke to was completely frantic. She said, “My grandchild has disabilities and you can’t throw this in.” They were supposed to start school in about 10 days and they’re finding this out. They were really uncertain about what was going to happen with the social worker who the grandchild had really bonded with, as well. So I reached out to Tides and St Mary’s and late that afternoon received their statement that “Yes, we are shutting down.” What’s happening next? Who knows? I’m getting the impression that this caught the Child Advocate’s Office off guard. Disability Rights Rhode Island, which has also been investigating St. Mary’s for the last couple of months, was also completely caught off guard. So it remains to be seen what happens next.
Hernandez: Back in May, the Board of Directors at St. Mary’s hired this outside agency to manage a facility. The intention: to reopen the residential treatment center. It never happened. Why?
Milkovits: They weren’t experienced.
Hernandez: Wouldn’t they have known that when they were choosing them?
Milkovits: That’s a question I have that has not been answered. And it’s been extremely difficult to get answers to some of those questions. I was not able to get a copy of the contract that St. Mary’s and Tides have. I received some pages of it that showed that they were being paid $35,000 a month to take over the management of St. Mary’s. I mean, now essentially Tides Family Services is taking over the running of the school, bringing the kids out of St. Mary’s to a building that they own in Pawtucket and going to set up classes for them there. They’re going to find them other services, for the kids that were being provided services at St. Mary’s.
Hernandez: You mentioned also back in June that kids were removed from the facility. They were relocated to another state, weren’t they?
Milkovits: Some were. Actually, the family that I’ve been in touch with and have written about, their grandchild was able to come home. Now, he had been there at St. Mary’s for 14 months, which begs the question, why was he there for so long if he could have been moved home with supportive services? I mean, that’s a question, really, that’s been raised by the State Child Advocate’s Office, by the U. S. Attorney’s Office, which is very concerned that Rhode Island has a tendency to over-institutionalize children.
Hernandez: St. Mary’s was the only in-state psychiatric residential treatment facility for kids in Rhode Island. I’m wondering if you’ve heard from any officials about what this closure is going to mean. How does the state provide those services now?
Milkovits: Yeah, that’s a great question and that’s something that they’re wrestling with. They had set aside $11 million in pandemic funding to expand St. Mary’s by, I think it was about 12 or 16 beds. And that project, of course, is canceled because St. Mary’s is no more. But that was intended to be kind of a stopgap because there are so many children who need services, who need beds, and we just don’t have them. Right now, there are 81 Rhode Island children who are in facilities across the United States, as far away as Idaho and Florida, depending on the services that they need.
Hernandez: During the summer, the DCYF decided not to go ahead with the $11 million project to expand the residential facility. What happened to that money? What’s going to happen to that money?
Milkovits: Great question. They’ve already spent about $2 million in preparing for the project that was supposed to break ground, I think, in March. And what’s going to happen with that money? Who knows? I mean, right now the state is moving forward with a $45 million project for a residential treatment facility for girls in Exeter. They broke ground on that recently. It’s not going to open until spring 2026. So what happens now? You know, the push right now is to support children so they don’t have to end up in a psychiatric residential treatment facility, so they’re not in an institution. Some kids need it, but not every child needs it. Not every child needs to be there so long. This is what I’m hearing from advocates. What they really want to see is a continuum of care for children so that they can be in the least restrictive environment. Maybe some of them can be at home. Maybe some of them can be in therapeutic foster homes or group homes or something else where they are getting the services that they need, but they don’t need to be in one of these facilities, either very far away from Rhode Island or where the state is spending a thousand dollars a day to place a child.
Hernandez: Is this the end of St. Mary’s? And what about the facility? What happens to that place?
Milkovits: I don’t know what’s going to happen to that place. That’s one of the many questions that has not been answered. One of the questions I asked is, are they planning to file for bankruptcy?
Hernandez: Amanda Milkovits, reporter for the Boston Globe. Amanda, thank you again for the insight.
Milkovits: Thank you for having me on.
