St. Mary's Home for Children to close. What's next for the troubled facility?

St. Mary’s Home for Children , the subject of a devastating report early this year detailing rampant chaos, abuse and mismanagement, is closing its North Providence residential psychiatric treatment center.

In a statement late Tuesday afternoon, the nonprofit agency said it was also relocating its outpatient program and its George M. Hunt Campus School to offices of Tides Family Services, the agency that took over day-to-day operations of St. Mary's in May.

St. Mary's provided outpatient services to more than 100 other children (and their families) who were sexually exploited or experienced other forms of trauma. The agency also ran school programs for two dozen more children.

"This decision marks the end of a long history of St. Mary’s Home for Children which has been providing specialized educational and therapeutic residential and outpatient services to children in need since 1877," the statement read.

"Efforts are currently underway to minimize disruptions to students’ educational placements for the 2024-2025 school year. Families, local school districts, and St. Mary’s employees have been informed of the closure."

New residential treatment center in Exeter not expected to open until 2026

Dire concern about the future of St. Mary's ramped up last week among the state’s child care advocates, even as state leaders broke ground in Exeter on a new 16-bed residential treatment center for adolescent girls.

That $45-million facility isn’t expected to open until 2026.

Those discussions with state officials extended through the weekend, with several advocates expressing frustration that there was no plan yet in place for those children needing residential treatment care.

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Without the North Providence agency, “we do not have one available bed in Rhode Island for a kid who needs it," said North Kingstown state Rep. Julie A. Casimiro.

Rhode Island currently has 81 children in its care receiving services in states as far away as Alabama and Tennessee because it cannot provide those services locally. The annual cost, said Casimiro: $35 million.

In its statement, St. Mary's said, "The decision to cease operations was driven by the financial challenges of maintaining the school, community based and outpatient programs absent additional revenue from residential programming. Although initial plans were for Tides Family Services to take over operations at the St. Mary’s campus, this option proved unfeasible."

The DCYF stopped placing children in St. Mary’s last November as an investigation by the state Child Advocate’s Office was uncovering a litany of failures involving improper child care, assaults on children by other residents and staff, and mismanagement.

St. Mary’s longtime executive director, Carlene Casciano-McCann, retired soon after the report’s January release.

St. Mary’s hired an interim CEO, Charles Montorio-Archer. But his challenging of some report findings proved corrosive, and his tenure was short-lived.

In May, Tides Family Services agreed to take over the day-to-day operations of the home, despite having no experience running a psychiatric treatment center.

But within weeks, t he DCYF began looking for alternative placements such as foster homes or other community programs for the 10 remaining children still in the residential facility who couldn’t return to their families.

Tides plan to reopen St. Mary's residential program rejected by state

Said St. Mary's in its statement: "In response to directives from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Tides Family Services presented a plan and timeline for restarting the Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) at the St. Mary’s campus. However, this plan was subsequently rejected by the state. As a result, the PRTF will not reopen."

In June the DCYF asked the state to pause construction of an $11-million, 12-bed addition to St. Mary’s until “additional leadership and organizational decisions to be made by St. Mary’s.” The addition was to be funded with federal pandemic relief dollars.

That addition has now been "permanently terminated," St. Mary's said.

Beth Lemme-Bixby, CEO of Tides Family Services, said in the statement, “The Tides team worked tirelessly and logged hundreds of hours in its effort to develop a plan, timeline and budget to restart the PRTF and make its vision of developing a continuum of behavioral health care services centralized on one campus a reality. Tides remains hopeful that EOHHS and DCYF remain committed to providing the full continuum of behavioral health care in our community that is focused on children’s behavioral health needs."

Jeff Cascione, president of the St. Mary’s Board, said, "while we were only able to transfer the community-based outpatient services and a portion of the school to Tides, we are confident that the youth in these programs will be well-served by Tides Family Services. Every decision was made with the best interests of the children and families in mind."

Spokespeople for Gov. Dan McKee and the DCYF did not return phone calls seeking comment.

As of Tuesday evening, it remained unclear what happens to the St. Mary's property and whether St. Mary's would file for bankruptcy. Frank McMahon, a spokesman for St. Mary's, said he would forward those questions to St. Mary's board of directors.

Contact Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com .

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: St. Mary's Home for Children to close. What's next for the troubled facility?