Two new short-term treatment centers for children in foster care are set to open in the fall, part of a larger plan to address problems at shelters for teenagers that surfaced more than a year ago following reports of abuse and neglect at a shelter for foster children in Harwinton.

While Connecticut officials have implemented several planned reforms to the shelters, problems persist with staffing, safety at the homes and an overstretched mental health care system, service providers and officials said.

The Specialized, Trauma-Informed, Treatment, Assessment and Reunification homes, or STTAR homes, are designed to be emergency shelters for foster children who have nowhere else to go. They are “a last resort for youth when all other placements have been unsuccessful or haven’t met the youth’s needs,” according to the report from the Department of Children and Families, presented during a public meeting of the Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee July 17.

In 2023, reports emerged from a girls shelter in Harwinton of physical and sexual abuse, a lack of supervision of kids and insufficient therapeutic care for children with histories of severe trauma. That home closed down soon after, and early in 2024, state officials announced a broad plan to improve the homes.

“We’re all grappling with a phenomenon that we’re seeing not only in Connecticut but across the country,” said Department of Children and Families Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lilly, who became commissioner in 2024.  

Hill-Lilly said the STTAR homes are the reason this hasn’t happened in Connecticut. DCF has made strides to improve the program, but there is still work to be done, she said.

One of the major enhancements was creating two short-term stay facilities for kids, called Intensive Transitional Treatment Centers. There will be one facility for girls and another for boys, with six beds each.

The contract for each facility is about $2 million per year and can be extended for up to three years, according to the request for proposals.

The program is similar to the STTAR programs, although it offers more clinical support and aims to stabilize kids so they can get another placement, said Frank Gregory, administrator of children’s behavioral health community service system at DCF.

“The budget is bigger, and so it provides the opportunity for additional resources, particularly staffing resources, clinical services,” Gregory said. “It is intended, similarly [to STTAR homes], to be relatively short-term … stabilization and transition.”

The Waterford Country School is in negotiations to operate the programs at its facility in Waterford and expects to sign the contract soon, chief executive Chris Lacey said. The nonprofit operates a private foster care program, a STARR home for boys in Montville and other services for children.

“To me, kids are kids,” Lacey said. “They have different ages and different needs, and that’s kind of it. And really what we’re trying to do in this child welfare system is just match what the kids need when they need it and get those two things as close to the same time as possible.”

Investigations following the Harwinton reports found that children were staying too long at the STTAR homes, which are meant to offer short-term respite. Providers said kids sometimes stayed from 190 to 300 days.

They said it can be hard to discharge kids into another placement such as a foster home or an inpatient psychiatric facility because there just aren’t enough resources.

“That’s a long time in what’s supposed to be a temporary setting,” said Margaret Hann, the chief executive of The Bridge Family Center. “So the kids tend to get hopeless. When that happens, there’s more running away. There’s more critical incidents.”

The Bridge operates three STTAR homes in Hartford, West Hartford and Wolcott. The program also ran the facility in Harwinton.

Since DCF announced enhancements to the STTAR program, two critical incidents have resulted in state officials ordering programs to halt admissions, Hill-Lilly said.

Hill-Lilly added that these pauses are often in the interest of serving children and don’t necessarily mean a program has done something wrong.

“Pausing is also a healthy way to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to look closer at some issues here,’ or ‘We do not want to overwhelm a situation that is really, really on edge already,’” she said.

During a July 17 meeting of the state’s Juvenile Justice Policy Oversight Committee, Hill-Lilly and Gregory talked about a couple of dangerous incidents at STTAR homes that have necessitated police involvement.

In one incident, a teenager tried to purchase cannabis and pay digitally. But when the payment didn’t go through, the dealer showed up at the STTAR home, they said.

The homes, like other child welfare agencies, have also had problems recruiting and retaining staff. DCF officials say they are looking into ways to increase pay for employees who work directly with kids.

Providers said it really comes down to a system that’s overstretched. More kids are reporting serious mental health problems, and there isn’t enough care to go around.

“The state needs to build its capacity to meet the mental health and behavioral health needs of all children,” said interim Child Advocate Christina Ghio. “That means increasing availability for outpatient treatment, intensive in-home and community-based services, and out-of-home treatment programs.”

One of the enhancements DCF implemented was to speed up the admission process for STTAR home residents who need to go to an inpatient psychiatric center. So far, five children have used that expedited process, according to the report.

But Hann said she still has children who have to wait too long to get the care they need.

Hill-Lilly said that organizing the system so that it best serves Connecticut’s children is one of DCF’s current challenges.

“I believe that we have resources,” she said. “We just have to line them up to the emerging needs that we’re seeing now. We’re just trying to get our arms around that.”

DCF also reduced the number of children at each STTAR home from six to five, which Lacey said has been helpful. He was able to move the STTAR program into another house off of the Waterford Country School’s main campus, which made it feel more like a normal home, he said.

The state also gave each program $125,000 to support more recreational activities for the kids. Providers said the teenagers often get bored and need things to do that establish some normalcy.

Lacey used the money to purchase another vehicle for the program so even if one was being used to take a child to the emergency room or another placement, the other kids can go to an activity.

DCF has also increased their regulator visits and offered more training to STTAR home workers, among other enhancements.

Ghio said there still need to be improvements to the STTAR programs.

“Many of the children in STTAR homes have experienced significant trauma, neglect and/or abuse,” Ghio said in a statement. “There is a need to improve the quality of care and treatment in the STTAR homes for children who need to be placed there.”

Josh Michtom, an attorney with the Center for Children’s Advocacy and a Hartford City Council member, said the outcomes and data are important to look at to determine whether the enhancements are working and that the system as a whole needs to be in the conversation.

“When we look at how the new STTAR home model is going to work, we’ve really got to ask, what have they done to limit the flow of kids into it?” Michtom said.

Hann said there needs to be more support for foster families.

“I just think we need to really do better,” Hann said. “Because what we’re doing right now, placing kids in multiple foster care, it’s really kind of not working, so there has to be a better look at that.”