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Center's Troubled Teens 'Assaulted With
Needles,' Officials Say
By Jon Lender
October 18, 2008
Teens being treated for drug abuse
and mental illness at Stonington Institute have been involuntarily
injected with medication to restrain them in what the state attorney
general and child advocate Friday called another example of poor
supervision by the Department of Children and Families.
At least five boys aged about 16
received such involuntary injections, while aides held them
immobile, at the DCF-licensed private residential facility in North
Stonington during a two-month period this past spring, state Child
Advocate Jeanne Milstein said Friday after she and Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal sent a letter filled with criticism to DCF.
Milstein said the youths were
considered "out of control" at the time that they were injected.
If DCF had been properly overseeing
what goes on at Stonington, "the practice of involuntary
intramuscular medication would have been discovered sooner and fewer
children assaulted with needles," Milstein and Blumenthal wrote to
DCF Commissioner Susan Hamilton.
The practice of involuntary
injections has been halted, and no lasting harm to the youths was
reported, but "once again we see evidence of DCF's inability to
demand and oversee the delivery of effective, safe services for
children," Milstein and Blumenthal wrote.
Stonington Institute executives
could not be reached late Friday.
However, a spokesman for DCF, Gary
Kleeblatt, said the agency handled the situation promptly and
effectively.
"DCF quality improvement staff
discovered the use of the involuntary administration of medication,
and our medical staff responded by going to Stonington to instruct
them to immediately discontinue this practice, which involved a few
instances," Kleeblatt said.
"We also called in the executive
director of Stonington's corporate parent, as well as Stonington's
chief executive officer, to emphasize that this was unacceptable and
to get assurance that the policy would be changed. The practice is
no longer being used, and the psychiatrist who was involved in the
involuntary administration is no longer employed at Stonington."
Friday's criticism of DCF by
Blumenthal and Milstein came almost on the eve of Monday's planned
investigative hearing by two legislative committees into DCF
operations.
Angry legislators decided to hold
Monday's hearing after a summer of news stories about problems,
including the death of an infant who was a foster child under a DCF
worker's care and rising costs and the use of potentially dangerous
restraints at the DCF-run Riverview psychiatric hospital for
children in Middletown.
Friday's letter represented
preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation by Milstein and
Blumenthal into operations at Stonington Institute, which has come
under state scrutiny for problems in past years.
In 2006, DCF officials stopped
sending children to the treatment center for teenage boys and girls,
which is run by former state Sen. William Aniskovich, after
receiving reports of a high number of children running away from the
program.
DCF resumed sending them briefly,
but stopped again in 2007 because of further problems.
The facility now houses fewer than
20 children, about half of whom were sent there by DCF, according to
Milstein's office. Stonington Institute has been receiving several
million dollars annually from the state.
Milstein and Blumenthal said in
Friday's letter to Hamilton that their current inquiry into
Stonington Institute is in its "preliminary stages," but they are
already "gravely concerned about the safety and care of the children
who remain in residence there despite chronic program deficiencies
that have long been identified by DCF. ... Our preliminary
assessment shows clearly that Stonington Institute's programs for
children are very troubled and that DCF has known of these severe
problems for some time."
They said that "over a period of
years DCF has found serious deficiencies in Stonington's therapeutic
program, including inadequate staffing, high staff turnover, ...
lack of training, poor communication [and] inadequate supervision."
Earlier this month, Milstein's
office delivered a highly critical report on DCF's supervision of
the now closed, privately run Lake Grove residential treatment
center that the DCF had licensed in Durham.
She said the failings that led DCF
to remove its client children from Lake Grove had occurred at other
DCF-supervised treatment facilities — and now history may be
repeating itself at Stonington Institute.
DCF's Kleeblatt said the department
"has required Stonington to develop and implement a corrective
action plan to address issues related to the treatment program and
environment, staffing and supervision. This plan is closely
monitored by DCF from both a program and licensing perspective."
"As a result, we have seen
significant improvements in the treatment program, including
individual, group and family therapy, and staff have been trained in
both behavior management and in the treatment program, which is a
nationally recognized ... model for substance-abusing adolescents.
Stonington also has implemented quality improvement and staff
communication protocols to ensure that staff and supervisors are
aware of incidents and trends. We have seen that incidents are
trending down. Finally, staff supervision has improved."
He said DCF officials "will
continue our oversight and consultation, and to monitor and evaluate
the status of the program and our plan. We share concerns about
Stonington and are carefully monitoring the program."
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