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Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence to be used for youth


On Monday, April 6, the Department for Children and Families (DCF) will move their temporary short-term residential stabilization program currently located in St. Albans to the Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence.

On March 24, DCF opened a temporary residential program for youth in St. Albans called Suite 12. This program was created in response to COVID-19 and the need for the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Facility to be used for adult psychiatric patients who are COVID-19 positive but not requiring emergent hospital care. Suite 12 in St. Albans served males ages 13-18 that required residential care due to behavioral/mental health concerns and/or juvenile delinquency placement. It also served youth in the custody of the Department of Corrections. The St. Albans space was not able to be fitted with the security measures needed for this level of programming.

The Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence (MTCR) was selected to house DCF’s temporary short-term residential stabilization program for youth. MTCR has been vacant since Tuesday, March 31, when the Department of Mental Health temporarily moved the Middlesex residents to an unoccupied, separate unit within the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital (VPCH) in Berlin. This move was completed in order to ease operating challenges and improve safety and care due to staffing availability. These residents have not been admitted to VPCH but are simply receiving the same services and therapeutic care in a different environment.

The Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence facility offers outdoor areas including a recreational area and interior spaces for activities, creativity, and wellness. It is hardware secure with locked doors and perimeter fencing. Due to the facility being locked, this program will only be available to those youth in DCF custody within the juvenile delinquency system and youth in the custody of the Department of Corrections. The program will house up to five males, ages 13-18.

The DCF Middlesex program is characterized as a temporary short-term stabilization program. The program’s services include positive behavior modification programming called Trauma Informed Effective Reinforcement (TIER), Safe Crisis Management, educational programming, psychiatry services provided by the University of Vermont, Alpine Telehealth services, mental health and crisis screenings provided by Howard Center’s First Call. The Intake and Screening, Clinical Crisis and Acute Psychiatric Response and Emergency Safety Interventions policies developed for Woodside will apply at the Middlesex program. 

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