Matthew Bernstein, Vermont’s child, youth and family advocate, in November 2023. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger Restraint reform Advocates and lawmakers want to place new statutory limits on the use of restraints and confinement practices for some youth in state custody. And when thos e methods are used, they say, they need to know more about each incident. According to Matthew Bernstein, the state’s child, youth and family advocate, it’s an area overdue for reform. To begin with, he said in an interview Friday, it’s very difficult for his office — and the state government as a whole — to form a clear picture of how kids in the state’s care are treated. “We don’t have the most basic picture of the use of these techniques,” Bernstein said of restraint and seclusion practices in treatment facilities. Key information is often missing from providers’ reports of incidents, he said, and hundreds of instances likely go entirely unreported each year. Vermont’s Department for Children and Families oversees the care of a rotating population of children with complex needs in residential treatment programs, foster homes and other contexts. VTDigger previously reported that physical restraints and seclusion, or when a child is involuntarily restricted to a single room or area, were used hundreds of times in 2023 and 2024 in facilities caring for the state’s most vulnerable children. Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, who chairs the House Human Services Committee, has been a supporter of H.657, a broad bill that includes a number of protections for kids in the care of the Department for Children and Families. The bill passed in the Senate on Thursday and will return to the House for consideration of several amendments. “We want to ensure that restraint and seclusion are not used as programmatic aspects of a child’s treatment,” Wood said in an interview Friday. The kids in question, she said, are “already dealing with severe trauma.” An annual report Bernstein’s office released in December indicated that previously reported trends have continued, if not increased, with 461 recorded instances of restraint or seclusion identified by officials in 2025. That’s up from roughly 300 in 2024, according to data from the Department for Children and Families last year. “Whenever we place a youth in our care,” wrote a spokesperson for the department in a Friday email, “DCF remains committed to ensuring the children and youth receive the best possible support and treatment.”  In its current form, H.657 would limit in statute a number of restraint practices, both in transit scenarios and in everyday care. Some practices — such as chemical restraint, or the use of medication to restrict a child’s behavior — are already prohibited in Vermont facilities, albeit by regulation rather than statute. Other provisions in the bill, such as a prohibition on belly-down or prone restraints in nearly all cases, represent a concrete tightening of acceptable practices in state youth treatment facilities, a department spokesperson confirmed. In testimony earlier this year, Department for Children and Families Deputy Commissioner Aryka Radke was largely supportive of the bill, noting substantial overlap with existing rules but saying the bill’s intent is “aligned with the values” of her team. Bernstein noted in his own testimony that the bill “enhances, clarifies, and provides specificity to existing law and practice.”  Wood was also firm in her desire for Vermont to maintain scrupulous supervision of kids in the custody of the Department for Children and Families who are sent out of state for their care. Bernstein said roughly half of such residential treatment placements are outside the state. For Wood, the state needs to hold out-of-state facilities with Vermont patients to the same standards of reporting as its own programs. “If for some reason they won’t comply with (Vermont’s standards), then maybe you should think twice about whether or not a child should be placed there,” she said. But the inclusion of out-of-state facilities in a ban on chemical restraint in particular has been a hang-up in recent weeks. Department officials are concerned that such a requirement could limit the state’s ability to work with certain federally regulated out-of-state facilities that offer services or capacity that might not yet be available in Vermont, the department spokesperson said. It’s a conversation lawmakers have yet to fully resolve, Wood said. Chemical restraint was used on a child in Vermont custody at least once in an out-of-state facility last year, according to Bernstein. In the know Vermont regulators are lending advice to officials in Ghana — yes, Ghana — as that country works to roll out its own regulated cannabis market. State officials from the Cannabis Control Board and Gov. Phil Scott’s administration hosted members of Ghana’s Chamber of Cannabis Industry this week, according to a press release from the control board. The group discussed rulemaking, the role of growers who sold cannabis before Vermont’s market was regulated, and how hemp-based products should be regulated, among other topics. Ghana is in the process of becoming the first country in Western Africa with a legal cannabis market, largely for medicinal uses. Officials from Ghana are also working with Vermont State University, which has a cannabis studies program, to hash out their regulatory framework, the control board said. — Shaun Robinson On The Hill U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., on Thursday called on U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to investigate alleged sexual assault by Israeli settlers and soldiers described in a sweeping New York Times opinion piece this week. The details in the column, by the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, were “heinous,” Welch said on the Senate floor. Welch said Rubio should investigate the claims under the provisions of a federal law named after former Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy — the “Leahy Law” — which bars the U.S. government from providing military assistance to other countries if there is credible information that those countries have committed “gross violations of human rights.” “American taxpayer funds are directly supporting foreign military units that have been credibly implicated in rape and other abhorrent acts of sexual violence,” Welch said. “That is unacceptable. It must change.” — Shaun Robinson Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont lawmakers push ahead on new limits on restraining kids in state custody. ...read more read less