As recently as last week, Youth Services Center (YSC), the detention center operated by the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS), still has more residents than it can accommodate, and even fewer staff members present than what’s needed to ensure a safe and stable environment.
During a DYRS oversight hearing, Katerina Semyonova placed the blame on the lack of local treatment options for committed youth, along with what she described as a lengthy placement process.
“A large part of this problem is the District’s failure to have a comprehensive continuum of community-based services that are timely, robust and meaningful,” Semyonova explained on Feb. 15 while testifying before the D.C. Council Committee on Recreation, Libraries, and Youth Affairs.
Semyonova counted among a bevy of public and government witnesses who spoke before the committee chair, Council member Trayon White (D-Ward 8), during the budget oversight hearing.
This hearing, which took place months after DYRS Director Sam Abed’s contentious confirmation process, allowed Semyonova, special counsel to the director for policy and legislation at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, to pinpoint what she called missteps that arise when DYRS youths await placement.
She told White that, from the moment Court Social Services files a notice of intent, DYRS squanders weeks of prep time needed to determine rehabilitative care, find and implement an appropriate program, order assessments and coordinate care.
As a result, more than 40 committed youths at YSC are currently awaiting placement, Semyonova told the council committee on Feb. 15.
Semyonova continued her testimony, pointing out that youths spend weeks waiting to meet with pre-commitment workers. Additionally, as she explained, DYRS’ reliance on court-based child guidance clinicians further delays the process, which often compels youths to request a continuance of disposition hearings.
Such conditions, Semyonova said, prevent YSC youths, especially girls, from receiving a level of psychiatric care recommended by experts, whether at home or at New Beginnings Youth Development Center, a 60-bed residential facility for DYRS-committed youths.
“Currently, New Beginnings, which is considered a behavior modification program, is the only readily available secure placement for boys,” Semyonova said in her testimony.
“While DYRS also contracts with Woodburn Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility [in Baltimore], Woodburn’s lengthy time makes it not a viable option for most youth. DYRS sends a small number of youths to other placements but those placements come with extensive delays because of DYRS’ complicated procurement process.”
Further Examining the Treatment Gap
During the Feb. 15 budget oversight hearing, DYRS Director Abed told the Committee on Recreation, Libraries and Youth Affairs that there are 87 youths in an out-of-home placement, which includes DYRS-operated facilities and out-of-state non-DYRS facilities.
Meanwhile, only eight committed young people are in nearby non-DYRS facilities, according to data presented by Abed.
“One of the primary drivers for using out-of-state facilities is the fact that we do not have [residential treatment centers] or [psychiatric residential treatment facilities] in the District,” Abed said to White and Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large). “For any of the kids that are recommended, and we do have a number of youth recommended at that level, we just can’t care for them in the District.”
A 2022 report released by D.C. Disability Rights highlighted this problem, saying that children are often shipped off to treatment facilities outside of the District for months at a time.
In February, DYRS circulated a request for proposals, also known as an RFP, for a D.C. based provider for therapeutic homes for youth.
Henderson, a Recreation, Libraries, and Youth Affairs committee member who also chairs the council’s Committee on Health, told The Informer that she’s had conversations with Department of Behavioral Health officials seeking similar resources for non-committed youth.
Their RFP, as she recalled, called for providers located within a 50-mile radius of the District.
In speaking about the lack of D.C.-based treatment facilities, Henderson said that certain conditions, including lack of green space and high rental costs, the cap on the number of residents for residential treatment facilities, and the labyrinthic nature of Medicaid reimbursement, often make it difficult for providers to set up shop within the city limits.
Companies that launch residential treatment facilities, Henderson added, often do so along the District’s border to receive patients not only from D.C., but Maryland and Virginia. The atmosphere in those areas, she zaid, might also prove more serene for youths.
“With the opioid numbers going up, this has been an identified area of a problem,” Henderson told The Informer. “Children’s National Medical Center raised a concern about young people who could stabilize but might need further treatment,” she continued. “Because we don’t have beds and options available in that regard, it makes it difficult [for hospitals] to tell parents that they need to refer them to a facility in Maryland or Virginia [for long-term residential treatment].”
The DYRS Turnaround Plan in Question
During the latter part of last year, a DYRS spokesperson told The Informer that DYRS submitted a proposal detailing plans to address conditions at the detention facility. During the recent budget oversight hearing, however, White mentioned only receiving an outline, not an actual proposal.
Abed, in response to White, said the full proposal came in the form of his PowerPoint presentation.
The Ward 8 council member subsequently questioned Abed about what he described as his failure to fully respond to a questionnaire about YSC staff-resident relations that the Committee on Recreation, Libraries, and Youth Affairs circulated.
In an email, White’s office told The Informer that he is working on legislation that establishes a funding mechanism that, once open to the public, works in partnership with DYRS to coordinate services for youth and their families.
Other bills that are in the works, a spokesperson said, mandate programming for at-risk youth upon their release and DYRS’ maintenance of a comprehensive data system that tracks youths’ status and outcomes during their commitment and after their release into the community.
Another piece of legislation would require DYRS to provide quarterly reports to the D.C. Council that include data from new facilities and community-based placements.
It hasn’t been determined when White will introduce these bills.
“While Council member White intends to introduce these pieces of legislation soon … please keep in mind that we are currently in the midst of oversight and budget season,” the spokesperson told The Informer.
Digging Deeper into DYRS’ Staffing Conundrum
In his Feb. 15 testimony before the Committee on Recreation, Libraries and Youth Affairs, Mark Jordan, executive director of Independent Juvenile Facilities Oversight, said Youth Service Center’s population exceeded what was then its 88-bed capacity last May for the first time in six years.
After a slight dip toward the end of the year, YSC’s youth population has been on the rise once again over the last several weeks, Jordan added.
In his testimony, Jordan went on to explain that recent DYRS personnel hires included a medical director and supervisory nurse, both of whom he said significantly improved DYRS’ quality of medical services.
Jordan however warned White that, even with DYRS’ expansion of youth development representatives from 100 to more than 120, the growing number of unavailable staff members, estimated to be one out of three, diminishes the impact of the workforce.
The problem more so affects YSC, which experienced a greater influx of residents than New Beginnings, Jordan said.
In his testimony, Jordan told White that, to alleviate this issue, available youth development representatives work overtime and DYRS employs other staff members to take on those responsibilities while youths are sleeping.
Abed later reported 58 DYRS employees as “unavailable to work.”
Those employees, he said, were using Family and Medical Leave (FMLA), though he couldn’t speak to how many within that group claimed injuries of their own versus that of family members. Abed later told Council members White and Henderson that he communicated with the Fraternal Order of Police about how to better encourage employees to return to work, stressing that part of that battle involved making sure FMLA documentation was correct and submitted in a timely fashion.
For Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Ashley Ruff, DYRS’ staffing issues stem from a failure to retain employees and from backgrounds similar to that of the youths populating DYRS facilities.
Ruff, who said she couldn’t attend the Feb. 15 oversight hearing due to her responsibilities to young people, didn’t mince words about what she described as the lack of government investment in opportunities for detained youth. She expressed her concern about the hurdles that they struggle to overcome when seeking resources inside the system.
In her written testimony that she plans to submit to the council’s Committee on Recreation, Libraries and Youth Affairs, Ruff, a mother of a preteen son, asked open-ended questions about the D.C. government’s priorities.
Her goal, as she described to The Informer, was to ensure that DYRS leadership thinks hard about whether YSC is living up to its name.
“DYRS needs to go back, revamp and find a better way to connect with the community and youth,” said Ruff, commissioner of Single-Member District 7F02. “That’s who it’s about. If it’s not about the youth or the seniors, you’re lost. Youth Services Center is supposed to be fixing the missing components and it’s not.”
