Rhode Island Enters Federal Consent Decree to Improve Services for Children with Behavioral Health Disabilities
Following a Department of Justice investigation, the state of Rhode Island has agreed to remediate its system to ensure youth with behavioral health disabilities in the care and custody of the Department of Child and Family Services (DCYF) are treated in settings appropriate to their needs, transitioned from inpatient psychiatric facilities to family settings, and prevented from unnecessarily prolonged psychiatric hospitalizations.
The Consent Decree—effective January 7, 2025—applies to youth under 21 with open DCYF cases who are hospitalized or at risk of hospitalization. Key reforms to take place over the next five years include:
- Discharge & transition planning
- Trauma-informed in-home services
- Data-driven quality oversight
- Workforce development
- Family and community engagement
Through the Rhode Island Executive Office of Health and Human Service’s Office of Data, Analytics, and Evaluation (ODAE) FHC staff participated in workgroups, provided data integration and analytic expertise, and created two tables for the baseline report made public in July 2025. The first table identified the demographics of children who had experienced an inpatient acute-psychiatric hospitalization or were at risk of one. The second table provided information about the average length of time children spent in an acute psychiatric hospital. FHC analysts leveraged the innovative Rhode Island Data Ecosystem which allowed for the integration of data from DCYF, Medicaid, and the Rhode Island Department of Health to identify the children in the two focus populations.
Through ODAE, FHC will continue to support this work over the next five years, contributing to the development and execution of quarterly progress reports that will rely on the framework created for the baseline analysis. These reports will allow DCYF to track and monitor children in the focus population and will also measure the State’s compliance and progress in meeting the requirements of the Consent Decree.