MONTPELIER, Vt.— Vermont State Employees’ Association (VSEA) members working for the Department for Children and Families (DCF) Family Services Division are sounding the alarm about a decline in the number of safe and secure locations to take care of Vermont youth in need.
Today’s Seven Days newspaper features a full-page adplaced by VSEA on behalf of its members working in DCF’s Family Services Division. In it, the union and its members are asking for the public’s help to spur Governor Scott and lawmakers to take some immediate action to address what the workers are calling a “crisis” when it comes to finding places to locate Vermont’s youth in need. VSEA members add that calls from the public asking for DCF help with a youth in crisis have doubled in just a year and are putting additional strain and a workforce that is already stretched thin.
“VSEA and our DCF members wanted to place the ad to educate a broader audience about what the situation currently is for a Vermont child in crisis and how action is needed now,” explains VSEA President Aimee Towne, herself a DCF employee. “Hopefully, our ad will translate into State, DCF officials and lawmakers receiving calls and emails from ordinary Vermonters who agree that something needs to be done ASAP to address the situation to help prevent a tragedy.”