CT POST Aug 22, 2015
HARTFORD — Lawmakers disagreed Friday with the state’s top child welfare official over the need for Connecticut’s high-security juvenile detention and education center.
Joette Katz, commissioner of the state Department of Children and Families, stressed that less than 1 percent of the 10,000 youths who are involved annually in the juvenile-justice system are ordered to the Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS) and its nearby unit for girls in Middletown. Even with 19 other facilities for the state’s most-troubled youth, a small percentage of state kids may always need the added security, she said.
“My job is to make this as secure and therapeutic a model as possible,” Katz told a special meeting of the state’s Juvenile Justice Policy Oversight Committee. “We agree with advocates that behavioral health treatment is imperative for the success of the youths in our programs. CJTS offers a menu of individual and group clinical services that we believe are the envy of many other jurisdictions and certainly far exceed anything found in adult and young-adult systems. Without a doubt, CJTS has moved from the traditional correctional culture prevailing at the facility’s inception to a more rehabilitative and relational culture.”
“Does Connecticut need the CJTS? What level care do we need? Is this the best method of delivery for the state of Connecticut?” said Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, co-chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. “I’m not blaming. I’m not attacking. We’re not sure if it’s a rehabilitation facility or a correctional facility. The way it’s going now, it’s just not working.”
“I think it’s a new day,” agreed Sen. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford. “We need a new environment.”
Walker and Bye were reacting to recent reports of hundreds of cases of restraint and seclusion, in a general atmosphere where suicidal children are at even greater risk of hurting themselves in the facilities, which cost $57 million to build and $30 million a year to operate. School officials said the average period of seclusion is about two hours or less.
Katz said the DCF is in the process of changing the culture and operations of the training school, as supervisions now have to be used when youths are restrained and secluded. Suicide-prevention procedures are also being revamped.
“This organizational change takes time and persistence,” said Katz, a former state Supreme Court justice who became the DCF commissioner when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy took office in 2011. She and about a dozen DCF officials, including William Rosenbeck, superintendent of the troubled CJTS, testified before the committee.
Katz said that while the training facility was built to house about 250 youths, this week there are only 65 males and five females, 80 percent of whom are 16 and older. About 20 percent have been abused or neglected.
Sarah Eagan, the state Child Advocate, who is a member of the panel, said that detained children are often at risk of despair and self injury.
“The use of seclusion is not therapeutic,” she said.