Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay. Good afternoon, folks. We are back here at House Human Services, and we are picking up testimony from various community partners who our budget teams have recommended spend an opportunity here for fifteen minutes and fifteen minutes only. And if you are mid sentence, we are going be cutting you off because we have a lot of people to hear from. So we are welcoming right now the Parent Child Center Network, and we have Ellen and Claire. So welcome. Much. We won't start timing until

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: you sit down and say,

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: stand up for your presentation. We

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: are running a clock just for people to know. This could very easily go south if

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: we don't keep it back.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: We're already being accused of giving some people preferential treatment that they get to be here and some don't.

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you so much for having us here. So I'm going to start out telling you a little bit about our impact and what we've been doing for the past year and a half now that we are a professional network. And then I'm going to turn it over to Claire who will tell you specifically about our budget ask. We were the parental network was actually established way back in 1988, authorized under state statute to provide a core services will tell you what those are in a minute. We cover all regions of the state, there are 15 parent child centers that have been around since the late 80s and early 90s. In fiscal year twenty three, the Legislature 150 authorizing the network to administer the parent child center integrated grant. So multiple funding sources were put together in the integrated grant. It now comes as of August when I was hired, it now comes to the network, million and change, and we disperse it to the 15 parent child centers. That state funding comes through the Department of Children Families, Child Development Division, and that $7,000,000 is our allocation for the past two years now. And we see that that is also in the governor's budget for this year. And the purpose of the network is by deepening our collaboration as a network comprised of leaders from each center, we can really build our statewide standards, we can increase our collective impact and work more closely together in an integrated way to provide consistent services for families with kids under the age six all over Vermont. Okay, so our centers are welcoming hubs in the community that are responsive to local needs. This past year, we served over 22,000 parents and 23,000 children. This includes 1,170 kids who have developmental, physical or health related needs. Here are our eight core services. We do have an impact report that's online that we shared with you that has information that about specifically about what these are, but you can see them, current support, parent education, concrete supports, home visits, playgroups, information and referral, early childhood services, and community development. Just a few highlights from the past year, we serve more than 22,000 parents this past year, that is an increase of about 3,000 over the previous year. Concrete supports, we're going be talking to you more about that in our ask. But this past year, we provided concrete supports to 4,220 families, that's a 28% rise over the previous year. And if you that phrase concrete supports may not be obvious to everyone, but that is like essential items and usually financial, but sometimes also referral source that helps meet a temporary need that will help increase well-being for a family. Things like evictions, helping with utility cutoffs, a few extra diapers for that week, emergency food, clothing, a car repair so that they can get to work, those kinds of things. We also hosted 3,000 playgroups around the state last year, providing opportunities to prevent isolation and strengthening parenting. And we served seventeen seventy families through Welcome Baby Supports. These are supports that go to families with newborns. It could be packaged at home, is it reaching them? And that is amazingly far reaching in that we got to one third of all the babies born in Vermont. We do maintain standards, we're part of the National Family Support Network, which is a national organization that maintains standards for Family Resource Centers. That's another word for parent child centers. We follow the standards of quality for family strengthening. We embed the five protective factors into all of our work. That is actually how we measure our impact against those five protective factors, parent resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting and child development, concrete support, and social emotional competence of children. And research on child development, these are embedded in the research where we know these protective factors are there for families, the outcomes are better, lower level of child maltreatment, increased income for parents, health indicators are better on a range of health indicators are improved when these key factors are in place. Okay, this is in our impact report. This is how one of the key ways that we measure our impact and a couple of things I just want to point out to you, it's a little hard to read on the screen. But the two that really stick out to us are I know where I can get helpful information about parenting and taking care of my children. We go from sixty five percent have that feeling before they use their parent child center to ninety eight afterwards, that's quite a big increase that shows that parent child centers are really a place where people feel comfortable going to get a range of services. And I have relationships with people who provide me with support when I need it. Fifty four percent before they came into a parent child centre had those relationships, ninety two percent had that relate those kinds of relationships afterwards. So that really shows that we are a source of support for families. There another report that we just got our eyes on was NORC did an evaluation of Vermont's eleven fifteen waiver Medicaid program. And they did a specific deep dive into the parent child centers. And there's a range of positive outcomes. I won't go into them. They're in your report. So I want to save time for our ask.

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: And I'll turn it over to my colleague, Claire, to tell you about what we are asking for. Thanks, Ellen. And thank you so much, committee members, allowing us the opportunity to testify today about our budget requests. So the Vermont Parent Child Center Network is requesting an FY twenty seven increase of $1,880,000 in the integrated grant to bring us to a total of $8,900,000 The three key prongs to this request: concrete supports, which we just described as a core service that goes out the door to families. It goes in and out, parent child centers, to families in every community. So a total of that is $180,000 $12,000 per PCC, for just what Ellen described earlier in terms of helping families spiral and the safety net shredded basically, keeping it intact and preventing families from falling further into risk. Benefit Assisters, which I think this committee may have been hearing about, having Benefit Assisting across the state of Vermont every parent child center for $1,200,000.080000 per parent child center to have staff trained in helping families apply and remain on essential safety net benefits, housing, SNAP, Medicaid, etcetera, to help prevent adverse effects of poverty. And then lastly, increasing capacity and support for staff, that's 500,000 of the 1,800,000.0, 33,000 per PCC, to help us maintain staffing levels, adequate wages, and meeting increased needs for services, which you can tell from Ellen's report, there is a percentage increase across the board for demand for services, and our population numbers are increasing. So concrete supports, That's a core service. Just what Ellen had said, we currently get federal funds for this. It is CBCAP, community based child abuse prevention dollars, upwards of $11,000 each. Our request is to double this so we can leverage more funds. Again, this goes out the door to families. It does not stay internally. And it runs out every year, sometimes mid year. Some years are harder than others, but we expend the funds, all of us, and we have nothing left to give up to families. And the needs increase, especially from here now till summer. Research shows, and I think this is really critical, family experiences of material hardship for children are associated with poor development outcomes and increased rates of child welfare system involvement. So those are predictors that we feel we're able to turn a curve on if we can provide parents with the critical tools and resources they need. Long term outcomes for children improve. Losing benefits. Again, this committee is aware of this. We're part of a coalition ask for benefit sisters across the state of Vermont. Losing Medicaid and SNAP is devastating for families. It is a lose lose for the state of Vermont in terms of revenue and Medicaid revenue streams that all systems rely on, medical, mental health, etcetera. So the federal safety net programs are critical for families. We're out in community. Parents are already turning to us to provide this service. We're helping currently. I've testified on Thursday in the budget hearings. We're actively helping families. I just gave three examples. Homeless family specifically, no address, no ability to get documentation. They lost Medicaid. We were able to help them directly in our portal. We can help get copies of birth certificates, copies of social security cards, vital documents and records that are required. We can scan, we can use our equipment, we can get it all uploaded into Vermont Health Connect and then support them as requests are made along the way. This is real and is vital, and we can absolutely realize benefit for families in our state if we're able to increase the capacity to help people with SNAP and Medicaid specifically for the state of Vermont. And then increased capacity to support staff. PCCs have been level funded since FY24, leaving us without funds to cover salary increases and health insurance costs have skyrocketed. I don't want to rush. I want to leave time for questions.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: We're serving Sorry, I'm going take three minutes afterwards for questions.

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: You get to your whole fifteen minutes. Okay, fair. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. A base funding increase will help us maintain increased service levels, which we've referenced, and help us with our financial stability and viability. We expect to continue to see year over year increased numbers of families coming to us and requiring additional supports, and we want to be there for them. And we plan to be. Here's just an example of some of the services that we provide that are vital state contracted services, children's integrated services, community child care support agencies, Dulce, family supportive housing, which is case management for families that are currently experiencing homelessness. Many of us are licensed child care providers across the state, and we're one single point of entry for services. Colocation of services is very cost effective and it improves access. Thank you so much for the time today.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you very much. Awesome. You've still got two

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: minutes and thirty three seconds. So

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: questions from committee members. Yes, go ahead.

[Unidentified committee member]: I apologize if I'm late. Are you asking for more money or what's already in the budget? You're just explaining to us what you do. It is

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: not in the governor's recommended budget. I request this $1,880,000,000 Okay.

[Unidentified committee member]: So where would it come from? That's that would be the question because I want to stick with the budget personally.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Right. This is their opportunity to make their case about whether they think that's the way it's working for everyone. Do you have any idea at the top of your head or a percentage, give me a range of how many families that you serve who are homeless?

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: Currently, do you mean across the state or in Washington County? No, I mean across the state. Yeah. It's increasingly growing demographic. I know for our parent child center, have at least, I wanna say 75 to 80 families that we're currently serving that are enrolled in FSH. And so that's just Washington County, which we are second to Chittenden in the state for homelessness family population. So I could probably roll that up to probably 200 off the record, and I can look into

[Unidentified committee member]: that and get back to you. Okay. And also the PCC play a big role in preventing homelessness and providing supports for people. So if you pay for new tires for their car, they can get to work and they don't lose their job and they don't spiral into other financial issues. We can also pay a partial rent payment, can't pay rent on an ongoing basis with our $12,000 each in CD cap funds, but we can help people put together so they can.

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: Well, I'm sorry,

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: I'll go through resources often within our region. So pop grants, capstone, family centers, concrete assistance, church, community funds, we'll pool them so families aren't necessarily double dipping. It's not duplication. We'll put together the package ask of what a family needs, whether it is security, back rent. And we'll also work closely, we do with Down Street in Central Vermont, and we'll help reconcile bad credit histories, bad rental histories, and we'll go to hearings around supporting them and writing references for their rental histories to do some repair and to help keep people safely housed, and we provide case management. And I was listening to that conversation representatively. Our Ginsburg housing program is all kids' management, and it has strong success rates. I'm sure the commissioner can help provide that information, but there's a report that's statewide that shows the trends in terms of number of families that are exiting the program successfully and stably housed. Thank you. Other questions, go ahead, Representative Bishop.

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: Two of the three asks reference how much that would be for parent child center. The $500,000 doesn't reference and even divide. Is there anything you can share with us about the intention of how that might describe?

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: Approximately the same dimension of 15, so about 33,000. Does that answer your question?

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I'm going to ask this of everybody who talks about the assisters. How do you view this as being different than what your staff are already doing to help families, like the example that you gave?

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: The example that I gave is driven through foresight. And we had an opportunity through Children's Integrated Services to train some staff statewide. And I encouraged a few of my staff to be proactive and get that training in anticipation of the budget reconciliation bill that the feds passed in October. So it wasn't something we were doing prior to that. It was an intention to be prepared to meet the needs in our community of which we have. We know there was a timeline that pushed some of those changes out to SNAP specifically, or they're going to be realized soon around work requirements. So a number of those things were pushed out towards the federal year 'twenty eight. I think a lot of us are doing it proactively to be supportive and the funding's not there to sustain it, to sustain someone taking a percentage of their time from other work that they're doing to maintain also a volume, an increase in volume to meet need. Does that answer your question, Sharon?

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: It did. Thank you. Anybody else have any final question? Thank you so much. We appreciate you being

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: here and all the work that you do out there. Appreciate it. Thank you all so much for your time today.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay. Next up is Jonathan Williams. I don't remember, Jonathan, if you were here when we talked about a strict fifteen minutes. And we'll give you a five minute heads up. And then we'll take three to four minutes afterwards for questions.

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: Thank you. I've sent a share request. There you go.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay. And I don't know if our next witness is also going to be sharing on the screen. If he is, then he should ready There to you go. Thank you,

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: Jonathan. Thank you, committee members. It's so nice to see you. My name is Jonathan Williams. I'm the executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Vermont. It is my eighth month on the job. Prevent Child Abuse Vermont is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, which I think is known of. Prevent Child Abuse serves the entire state of Vermont in all 14 counties in Vermont. Collectively, we serve more than 11,000 individuals, adults and children, and indirectly impact an additional 86,000 children. We have four key programs, but I don't want to get bogged down in the alphabet soup, so I'm just going to tell you what they do. Our family support programs provide supports for parents who are learning to be better caregivers for their children. It operates in corrections facilities, hospitals, parent child centers, daycare facilities, and community centers across the state of Vermont. We offer our Inside Out Dads program, which supports incarcerated fathers learn to be better parents. We provide supports for parents impacted by substance use disorder. And we provide circle of parents, which is facilitated peer led gatherings of parents and caregivers. Our Healthy Relationships Project is our school based prevention curricula. It's data informed and also informed by persons with lived experience. It is age appropriate, so you are not providing the same lessons to adolescents as you would be to young children. We have our Safe Environments for Infants and Toddlers program, that's shaken baby syndrome and safe sleep training in schools. And then we also published the Vermont Parents' Home Companion, which has been published for more than thirty five years. That is a resource that is given to all new parents in Vermont offered to all new parents in Vermont. We have 10 employees. We have a $1,100,000 budget. We used to have 12 employees. Unfortunately, due to delays in federal grant funding, we've had to restructure in the fall of this year, as well as diminish philanthropic support. Here's some key statistics on why prevention works. We have partnered with Florida International University and Johns Hopkins. It shows that for every two additional adult prevention trainings, correlates to decrease of one substantiated case of abuse in Vermont. That is published research. We also have data that shows that detailing the costs of child sexual abuse in Vermont, it is unfortunately distasteful to have to quantify these incidents, which have create very real harm for people. Here's additional data, but the one key statistic I want to share, and we can back this up with math, and I am happy to provide it to you. It's in our slides and in the comments. Preventing 100 incidents a year saves the state of Vermont $500,000, half $1,000,000, and we can back that up with actual figures. In Vermont, since 1992, there has been a seventy two percent decrease in victims of substantiated abuse cases and a seventy six percent reduction in children who sexually harm other children since 1990. That correlates very strongly with the length of time that PCAVT has been funded. Funding PCAVT and these types of programs works. I want to highlight that we receive a tremendous number of referrals from the Department for Children and Families, and that trend has been increasing over the years. They are referrals to our family support programs. We also receive referrals from the courts, from schools, high school and middle schools, as well as parent child centers. Our records go back as far as 2012. Unfortunately, records prior to that time were destroyed in the flooding in 2023, which is personally very ironic for me. Our funding has not increased since 2012, base appropriation funding. Our records indicate what records we do have that we have received an appropriation since the mid-90s. The proposed funding cut in the governor's budget is a 50% cut across all of our programs. It does not correlate to not meeting our grant requirements. It does not correlate to other service providers being able to provide similar programming due to a duplication of services. It is a 50% cut across all three very different programs. This is that trend I showed that indicates that substantiated CSA victims have decreased by seventy two percent since 1992. Again, that correlates very strongly with Provincial Abuse Vermont receiving funding. Here's another way to do our proposed cut. Here's some information that I won't go over that details. Who else does this work nationally? But in truth, no one provides this programming locally in the state of Vermont, and no one provides live training with the ability to answer questions as they arise. Some additional information. Think I opened the more the lengthier slide deck. My apologies. I already screwed up.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: It's in a different order than what we have.

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: It's in

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: a different order, I'm sorry. This is way more information than you need in fifteen minutes, but roughly, if the cuts come to pass, that is one fifth of our budget, it correlates to a 20% funding cut. That typically a very common estimate is that it correlates to a 25 to 30 35% reduction in program capacity. That means 2,308 fewer Vermont adults and ten thirty five fewer children in Vermont served. That's what these cuts will mean. So additional stories of impact, I will share the lengthier slide deck afterwards. Participant quotes, Prevention Child Abuse Vermont has been in this committee, I know, many times before. They do good work. We are providing pennies on the dollar services to thousands, tens of thousands of Vermonters. It is a cost savings to Vermont to provide $403,000 in a base appropriation funding. I know there was one time funding that was in '20 during the COVID pandemic, but truly, this work is saving the state of Vermont money. We have indicated in if I can find it here Nope. It's not in this slide. Wonderful. In your handouts, I have indicated some areas that I think could be used to fund this work. Yes. You did. I have an immense appreciation for the need for housing for the unhoused. However, I do having worked on that issue in Barrie City, and I realize its impact and the the absolute necessity of it. However, I do wonder how many of those projects will be shovel ready by fiscal year twenty twenty seven, which is July 1. I wonder if a small portion, I think it's 0.4% or 0.6% of that funding, could be used to fund our base appropriation, which, again, has not increased since as far back as our records go. There is the possibility of funding us through the rainy day fund potentially, There is also the possibility of using funding from the governor's surplus, and it wouldn't be used to only apportion 0.4, 0.6%. I can't recall off the top of my head which one it is, but it's less than 1% of that funding could be used to support our programming as well as restore the cuts to our partners, Lund and Easterworks, who are also providing essential services to Vermonters in in in this work in this sector. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you sincerely for your time. I know it is not easy what you do, and your decisions have very real impacts on people. As you may know, I was the legislator, but I served in commerce and they have it way easier over there.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: I think by the end of this session, we're all going to be asking for a change of venue.

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: Appreciate that. Again, my apologies. I provided the why isn't it? Oh, Okay. Thank you. Oh, no, you're good.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Thank you. Let's go for questions.

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: If you have any I

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: have a quick question for you. One of the things that I'm a little bit familiar with is the extent to which data backs

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: up the work that you

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: do, and independent data. So one of the things that we talked a little bit more about in this committee is having essentially verification of outcomes and data that supports it. And so could you just speak a little bit more about the independent verification of the work that you do? Absolutely.

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: Well, there was that study that I cited that was a published study, so it is independently reviewed and verified. And it does indicate that it was a study conducted in Vermont, and it indicates that providing two of our healthy relationships program classes within a single county in Vermont results in one substantiated case of sexual abuse being prevented. So again, you can't prove that something did not happen, but I will refer you to the data that I mentioned previously, which is preventing 10 cases of abuse, saves the state of Vermont amortized across the lifetime of that individual, across those individuals, half $1,000,000. And we are providing trainings to tens of thousands of Vermonters. So if just 100 of those 11,000 individuals that we serve, if that data points to incidents of sexual abuse being prevented, then we will have already made up the cut that the administration is proposing. And I'm quite certain that we, through these trainings, through the surveys, the results based accountability surveys that we issue and collect every year, we are preventing far more cases of that. There's also studies that are, again, are in the handouts, studies from the University of Georgia highlighting the costs of child sexual abuse in The United States as well. There's CDC data around the lifetime cost of rape. There is data from Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, which indicates that the public cost of domestic and sexual violence in Vermont is $111,000,000 per year for the state of Vermont. So again, prevention works. I know it is hard to prove an incident did not occur, but it is far more impactful in this sector and in food security and in housing, and supporting the unhoused, prevention saves the state of Vermont, Virginia.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Again and again, we have learned that so many times. Thank you. Certainly. Any other questions, members? Go ahead, representative Bishop. You'll have the final question.

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: You referenced

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: moving 12 staff members to 10, and that was driven and sounded like primarily by two things. One, a delay in federal funds, and the second, some curtailing, if you will, or or bringing in less than philanthropic dollars than anticipated.

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: Mhmm.

[Rep. Doug Bishop (Member)]: Is there anything you can tell us the months or time since then what the federal picture looks like for you for funding? And Sure. I don't know if that was a specific grant that was lost from the philanthropic side.

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: It was a pass through federal grant to the state of Vermont to us. It was exact our the funding delays were very much exacerbated by the government shutdown in the last fall. I will share that there are a number of state and federal grants that are not as timely as we would like them to be, mostly because they are reimbursement grants, and so we have to expend those monies in order to then draw them down. This grant, which is proposed being cut in half, is a general fund dollar grant that is appropriated through the Department for Children and Families, and, again, a reimbursement grant. So we have to spend the money in order to be reimbursed. And as a result of that, we do not have a lot of cash on hand due to the economic climate, and so we are having to borrow on our line of credit, which we have to pay down. We have done our best to diversify our funding streams. I come to this work from the Vermont Food Bank and have done my very best to improve our fundraising best practices in order to be less reliant on state and federal dollars. However and we have turned a corner, I strongly believe, but this does pull the rug out from us a

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: little bit, this proposed cut. Thank you very much.

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: Thank

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: you. Thank you, Jonathan. Okay, next up is going to be Matthew Bernstein.

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: Welcome. Hello, everyone.

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: My name is Matthew Bernstein. I'm the child youth and family advocate for the state of Vermont. Before I start, I just wanted to say we have a two page and I have not apologies to Lori. I I was I was on such good track when I'm chair last time by submitting my materials in advance, but we also have some pretty major capacity issues and a lot going on. So, anyway, I will submit my materials after this. And there's two things. There's this slideshow and there's a handout. At the end of the slideshow, there's a citation to this document I'm referring to, and also in the handout is the actual two page document. And what it is, is a front and back from Chapin Hall with kind of more, probably some of the same studies that Jonathan mentioned about return on investment for prevention programs and the cost. One side, believe is the cost of maltreatment and the other side is return on investment for prevention. So I just wanted to mention that. I also wanted to confess that while I will, oops, there's not my stuff, it's not much here. I will finish in fifteen minutes. Yes. No worries. It's the official time. Well, I will finish in fifteen minutes. This is definitely not a fifteen minute presentation, which is just as it as it ought to be. Whoops. Sorry. That's some funny animation. So here's here's where we're going. I'm gonna keep I'm gonna this is just the agenda. Here is our mandate, and many of you have seen these before. I wanna emphasize we're independent. We're nonpartisan. I wanna emphasize that child welfare is incredibly bipartisan, tripartisan. This is not none of this breaks down along party lines, which I think is is great. Our job is to provide systemic information to many players, especially EVOL or including EVOL, including the governor, including state agencies. We may this last bullet is in our is in our confidentiality section, but I think it just helps get to our mission. We may publicly disclose any patterns of conduct or repeated incidents if likely to mitigate a risk posed to the health, safety, and welfare of child abuse. And maybe I'll go backwards on this slide. So the last bullet there is another piece of our mandate that I think is important. The office shall advocate for the welfare of children and youths receiving services from the department directly or through funds provided by the department and those involved in the child protection and juvenile justice system. That's in the 3202 is kind of like the core of our mission. You all probably broke this. So you know this, but I think it's I look at this statute, I've looked at it a thousand times once a day, whether I need it or not, because it helps me focus on what our job is. And I think to get to the other bullets on this page, I think it's unusual for a state agency to be up here testifying about a different state agency's budget. But this slide gets to why we're doing that. We do not also, as the second bullet says, oversee DCF. Work collaboratively with DCF. We are independent. We advocate for children and youth in those systems. But this is a topic on which I feel we really have to speak out. And it's much broader than I think what's on the agenda today. Budgets and moral documents, you've probably heard this before. Crisis is not policy. So what this means is when I am in meetings and they're about DCF's deep end systems, they're locked systems, acute facilities, inpatient facilities, and I say, We need to invest in prevention. The response I get is, That's not what this meeting is about. You see what's on the agenda. This is the high end system of care committee. This is the Whatever it is. And then I started to ask, where is that meeting where I can say that thing? And I'm truthfully shocked that the answer is sort of just staring blank, honestly. So crisis is not policy. The way I see DCF is I see DCF's policy and its crises are melded together right now. And what I mean is because there are children who need placements today, because there are not enough foster homes, because there are some folks would say there are not enough block facilities, I strongly disagree with that. I would say because there are not enough step down facilities, there are not enough rungs in our ladder and our system of care, That drives almost everything DCF is doing in terms of policy. And what I mean by policy in the sense is building programs or not building programs. Where are they investing their money? What are they trying to create? And right now, almost everything that I see DCF is trying to create is in the deepest end of the system, and that is hugely problematic. So to summarize this, and I may get through three slides here. So to summarize the testimony, these cuts, especially those two that you just heard about and the previous witness, are a catastrophic mistake. I really don't like to be dramatic, truly. And the collaborative piece is crucial. And as you know, I focus on systems, not people, but this is a massive mistake. And it's emotional because it's such a mistake. The proposed cuts that you see to prevent child abuse Vermont, but also there's a couple others on the next slide. I'm almost apoplectic with how much in the wrong direction we are headed with this. Especially because we're talking about return on investment, we're talking about data as we should be with Prevent Child Abuse Vermont and others, parent child centers. In our office too, we do this. And I don't see this at all for the deep end systems. I don't see this at all for West River Haven. I don't see this for Red Clover. I don't see this for Green Mountain Youth Campus. I don't see any data. I don't see any data, truly. And those are 10 times more expensive than what we're talking about cutting from Jonathan's programs. So I think as the fourth bullet says, and I try to brief, the fourth bullet says, downward budgetary pressures should be on acute and locked settings, not on prevention. And what that means is it should be our deep end systems, no matter who's running them, that should have to We as a legislature, we as a government are saying, that's all you get, you gotta figure it out. And why? Because we should not want kids to end up in those systems. We should not want to build out those systems because we all know that the systemic gravity of those systems, especially when not only are there not prevention systems being built out, but they're actually being actively cut, that just pushes the whole system towards the deeper end and it makes things worse and not better. So it seems like a double standard to me that we are making these amazing community providers come in and justify their work. I think that in and of itself is important. We are handing out no big contracts to for profit prison corporations that are at an incredibly high amount, and I don't see the same questions to them. And I'm not talking about you guys. I just think in general, there is not accountability for those systems. So I meant to bring our annual report and I forgot to, but it is linked in the notes. I meant to bring the actual physical copies. For party favors, this chart is in our annual report. I was honestly surprised to find this. I really just was poking around on this nationwide child trends report, and they didn't have the states lined up against each other, but they had all the tables and you could just They were sorted alphabetically. So I just sorted them by who's spending the most or the least. And it honestly surprised me that Vermont spends, I think these are state dollars, I should say, which is what we're talking about. 2% of its child welfare budget on preventive services, 1% on child protective services, the second lowest state of any reported. There was like 40 something reported. But as you see, we're the third highest in out of home placements. That would be foster care and on down the line. We're about average in adoption and guardianship, and we're second highest. For older youth, that's largely because we're not participating in a federal reimbursement program for older youth. So essentially, our spending is upside down. And again, unfortunately, these cuts are only gonna make the problem worse. And these are three cuts that These are three of the most major prevention cuts that I saw on the DCF budget. There may well be others. Or there definitely are others. I mean, there's the aftercare for FFPSA, which is over a million and some others. I wanna emphasize that the rationale and the budget narrative for cutting this FFPSA prevention services cut, and if you don't know what FFPSA is, it's really not for fifteen minutes. But essentially, this is a federal program that reimburses states for prevention. This is the very, very basic summary. The law in general for all states does have some administrative hurdles. It hasn't been implemented in the best way. But I think it's kind of ironic for DCF to be saying, well, we can't implement this program, I. E. Drawdown federal dollars. So we're just gonna wipe out the 528,000. Locked facilities are 100% ineligible for federal funds right? From the junk. That is one of the first things that juvenile justice that leaps out when you look at locked facilities. So I don't think that's a justification for cutting the 528,000. Think even if we're not drawing down federal funds, or I know because there's that two page handout that I showed you all, I know that those are valuable even if we're drawing down 0 federal dollars in reimbursement. And I think also building them and expanding them, one day when we have this magic new data system Sorry, that was sarcastic. One day when we have a new data system, we may be able to draw down those dollars. Five minute warning. Perfect. And then the last statistic hopefully should make you say, what do you mean? Vermont will spend more than $1,600,000 this year on each locked bed for This is for youth, for juveniles. Right now, Red Clover treatment facility center, which you've probably heard about. That's a lot of money. It might be it might be number one in in the nation. There's more data about that in our annual report. Okay. So this oopsie. Sorry. This is this is something that, again, is uncomfortable because, you know, we're not in the business of recommending specific programs or saying specific programs are bad or saying there's a business that DCF should contract with or shouldn't contract with. However, this is really problematic. DCF just signed this contract. This was in the Sorry, trying to move my Zoom window off quick. DCF was signed this contract with this company called Abraxas.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Sorry, it keeps keeping No,

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: this is the slide I want. I was just trying to move out. I was trying to move. I see the Zoom window on my screen,

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: The which is in the

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: bottom line is DCF signed this contract with Abraxas to run West River Haven on 12/16/2025. A month earlier, the same company for not the same facility, our facility is not up and running yet, they had their license revoked by the state of Pennsylvania. And the specific charges are really important here because you can throw on words like gross incompetence, etcetera, but the failure to report piece of this is really crucial. The failure to allow access to investigators to the facility. They also and these documents are in the handout. They they got a warning let me let me back up. The initial the initial issue well, one of the initial issues was a staff member putting being aggressive with the youth, putting hands on the youth, slamming the youth's neck into a table. The facility did not report that. Then, the Pennsylvania regulators said, you were obligated to report that. You need to take some remedial measures. They did not take those remedial measures which resulted in license revocation. There is also separate lawsuit alleging systemic sexual abuse at this facility. And none of this is to say that the people running the facility in Vermont are bad or kids are gonna be abused here. Really, our request is incredibly basic. It's the last bullet. How is DCF responding to this? Who provides accountability? How do these allegations impact budget decisions? Because that's what we're talking about today. And how do we know children will be safe at West River Haven? Because I hope you know, we cannot do that. Lauren and I are two person office. We cannot do that. And in DCF's documents, they say, well, our new lock system is gonna be safer than Woodside because we're not running it. But the problem is with this, A, I've heard privately that top DCF folks have reassured some of you in the room, some legislators that this is no big deal. Maybe it isn't, maybe it is, but I think maybe some questions are appropriate. But b, they are the ones investigating. The folks overseeing this entity is DCF. And we already had this with Woodside where DCF's regulators wrote reports and it didn't do anything. So again, we're talking about a budget today, but these questions have to be asked. And so I see I'm pretty much out of time. These are some additional questions, and then I have some sources at the end. So there's a statement on page 112 of the DCF budget document. It says, Even with the elimination of these funds, someone read this from me, oh, sorry, DCF is still looking to expand evidence based prevention services. And my question is, where, how? I don't see that at all. I see the opposite. And maybe I'm missing something. I'm happy to be missing something. I would be very pleased if DCF came in here and said, Matthew, you were missing our whole menu of prevention that we're that we have planned but I have not seen it anywhere. Again, that meeting that I keep asking for, I don't know where it is. Has DCF assessed the return on investment of of the prevention programs? We talked about that and then the second one, assess the return on investment of the acute programs and the services. And acute here means locked and staff secure, which is like time delay locks. Number four is also crucial. There is virtually no data about Green Mountain Youth Campus, why it's 15 beds, how much it's gonna cost broken down into categories. There's all of this stuff about temporary funding or carryover in one time, and there's a chart that I included in the materials that I'll

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: start We know all of that, Matthew. So I don't want you to Chair, respectfully, sorry. I'm not sure you do We know. No. You know it's not clear?

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: No, no.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: You need to listen. I will listen. We know that we have not received adequate information about that because we continue to ask those same questions around the locked facilities, the Green Mountain campus. How is it? How much carry forward funds? We have one of our best people on that. And despite even that, we are I don't know how to exactly say it, but they have failed to provide comprehensive information that we have asked for. So I want to make sure I appreciate we're at the point now where we get to ask you questions. And so I'll open up for questions. Go ahead, Representative McGill.

[Rep. Jubilee McGill (Member)]: Yeah, I'm wondering if you

[Rep. Jubilee McGill (Member)]: could tell us, I've been very concerned about this contract,

[Rep. Jubilee McGill (Member)]: what the current process is. Let's say there's a youth that's red clover that feels they've been experiencing mistreatment. What is the current process if you've wanted to report that or for that to be investigated? And then a follow-up is, do you have improvements? Or could you provide us improvements for how we can build more accountability and tighter systems?

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: Thank you. So I suppose there are multiple avenues. They could call our office, They could speak with their attorney or their guardian ad litem to push their conditions through the courts. There is an internal AHS contact. It tends to loop kind of back to DCF. So that has been successful for some folks in the past. It's not independent. I'm sure I'm missing something. Mean, they could call Disability Rights Vermont, for example, if they had a disability who has access to facilities in a similar but different way than we do and they could sort of investigate. Those I think are the basic ways. You know, they could call, like, the attorney general's office in theory or something like that. But yeah, go ahead. Can

[Rep. Jubilee McGill (Member)]: I ask, yeah, how is, I'm just thinking of when we went and did our tour, and this is one of the things I don't remember asking about? How restricted could I, if I was a youth that Red Clover and I felt, could I just go and make a phone call when I asked? Or does it depend on my treatment plan?

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: That would be a good question for DCF and for particularly the Red Clover folks. Usually, what you said, I think is getting close. I don't imagine they allow you to make a call at any time for any reason. However, it's not a one phone call type of situation. To my knowledge. You know, I think a lot of youth are are relieved to get to Red Clover from other places, I think, because it's generally, you know, they have access to phone calls, but I don't know the specifics. You you asked the second part of the question in terms of improvements, you know, to that system? Yeah. I I mean, you know, I I don't I don't wanna shy away from saying, you know, with more capacity, our office could regularly visit. We don't we don't have regulatory power, but we do have access to facilities, which is important and information. You know, even, yeah, even with an increase in our budget, we could hire a contractor or something. I think I think what we really need is is employees in the base budget. You I think improving the legal system would also help with that. In other words, attorneys having smaller caseloads, more time, multidisciplinary representation, which would include a social worker and a peer advocate. I think those are some of the ideas. But I would say there's not a lot currently of oversight in that even sorry. Oversight's the wrong word. There's not a lot of access for youth in that situation beyond those people I mentioned. I think really it's their attorney or us, kind of. Thank you. Other question? Any other questions? Thank you.

[Jonathan Williams (Executive Director, Prevent Child Abuse Vermont)]: Thank you.

[Matthew Bernstein (Child, Youth, and Family Advocate, State of Vermont)]: Thank you. I'll submit these documents. Okay. I appreciate your time. Bye. Thank you very much.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay, folks. Are going to hear from another whole host of folks tomorrow starting right at 09:00. So please please do be on time tomorrow because we'll we'll get through a a bunch of these tomorrow. And I do want to check-in, have people send any proposed language that they have to Kandi? We'll be the step. Okay.

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: Okay. So all the people that are coming in want more money than what's

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: in the budget. Is that what we're Not doing necessarily more.

[Unidentified committee member]: Think- because I wanna stay with them. So I'm just checking.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, on Friday, when we start to review recommendations from individual teams, people will recall, I said, if you're going to suggest restoring something, you've to find it someplace else.

[Unidentified committee member]: I love that method.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: So I know people have been busy looking at that. I think what we just heard from this witness was perhaps we should have more balance in the system in terms of prevention than locked facilities or staff secures facilities, either in both of those.

[Unidentified committee member]: So just as a reminder, the last two folks who testified were on our request, and they both said that

[Unidentified committee member]: we'd already worked on finding it somewhere else. Well, and

[Unidentified committee member]: in both those cases, they were not asking for more money, they were asking for don't cut. Don't cut. And so we worked to find alternative sources of funding for them. So a lot

[Unidentified committee member]: of the witnesses will be like the ones that we heard who were asking that just now. But the money would have to be found somewhere else in the budget, we would have them with our own budgets. We don't have Peter, know, Ralph Paul, big and money, we don't want to burden the taxpayer. Okay, that's what I was hoping I would hear.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: So, in looking at what we heard today, from the Parent Childs Network, from Prevent Child Dates Vermont, from the Office of Child Youth and Family Advocate, a lot of those things will be considered preventative services. And how would we go about that? So we are going to hear from other folks about this concept of benefit assisters. Think that's what they're called. Assisters, I know. I can't remember if it benefits in front of it or But I finally got a Sisters dance. And so that's a concept I'm asking people to think about how it's a significant investment, but it's an investment that saves resources. So how would we figure out how to fund some portion of that? I don't think we'll be able to fund all of it, to be honest with you. And where would be the places? Because it's going to be in multiple budgets or multiple requests. We're going to hear from community action agencies about it. We just heard from parent child centers, and I'm not sure who else will be mentioning it.

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah, I just thought my understanding was that the Community Action Agency representative was kind of going to give a holistic, their testimony was going to kind of reference all the different partners that are included in that. So it would be more encompassing of the whole The community partner, it's actually, to talk about the Vermont, or the VCAP is going to do that. Amy Schellenberger is just going to testify just about the benefits of sisters. So it'll be separate. How Sisters does what? Benefit of Sisters. Essentially helping people to understand. So there's been lots of changes at the federal level.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: So HR1, federal HR1 bill that was passed, there were lots of changes. So like work reporting requirements or volunteering or that you have to reapply every six months instead of once a year. Most people, the general public doesn't really understand that. So if you're a person receiving reach up services, you might not understand that you're going to lose your SNAP benefit because you didn't fill out the right paperwork, or you even know that you had to fill out a paperwork that says, these are the places I've looked for work, or I have an exemption because I have a young child at home. So people who have young children at home, they have certain exemptions, but you might not even know that. So you have to file for those things. It's a big paperwork thing is really what it is, to be perfectly honest. But it's what the federal government has done to us at this point in time. And so there are thousands of people across the state that don't understand that. And so these assisters, and we'll hear more about them tomorrow, but these assisters are people in the community to help them understand what their requirements

[Unidentified committee member]: are. I volunteer for everything, so I like things to Well, okay.

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: You do?

[Unidentified committee member]: Yeah, do. I volunteer a lot. This would be like a great volunteer thing. That's awesome to help people that don't understand and be a great volunteer program. So anyway, so that's what the proposal is before us. So I help people all the time with paperwork. I take letters for people that are losing their jobs. All free. I won't take anybody's money. I do it all the time. People call me all the time.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Okay. So for the next forty five minutes or so, I know that people are sort of getting to the point where they're sort of coalescing around what their recommendations are gonna be and just making sure that you're working on your language, if you haven't submitted it to Katie already, and that you're ready for Friday, which is to give us an update and some preliminary recommendations. It doesn't have to be your final, but this is where you think you're headed. So we're going to do that on Friday so that we are able to really hone in on that by next Tuesday. So we'll be getting our memo to appropriations a little bit late, but it'll be there. We do have the hardest budgets, and they're particularly more hard this year. So, and yeah, they're really hard this year. And well, Tiff is here. I have no idea what we're going to say about the housing proposal in the DCF budget, because we definitely will not have gotten through the work on that. So it's kind of gonna be one of those things that come afterwards.

[Claire (Parent Child Center Network)]: Right, I think, well, that's been my expectation and I'll be sure to talk about it.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: But we have a commitment to, I have said outright that we would not be recommending anything more than what the governor has seen So in in terms of total dollar amounts, what's in the box? Okay, anybody have any questions about what's expected of them for Friday?

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: Okay. I cut the props, so I'm not worried.

[Rep. Theresa Wood (Chair)]: Alright. Go forth and continue your

[Ellen (Parent Child Center Network)]: work.