St. Mary’s Home for Children in North Providence announced Tuesday evening that it will cease its outpatient and educational services, effectively closing the North Providence facility that has been in operation since 1877.
The decision by St. Mary’s board of directors to close the campus — which housed a school and residential home for children with mental disorders — came after nearly eight months of increased legislative scrutiny and sweeping changes in the nonprofit’s leadership. The facility has been unable to admit youth to its intensive residential program since last year, and children who used those services were removed from the school building earlier this year.
On May 10, St. Mary’s transferred its remaining outpatient and community-based programs to Tides Family Services, another provider of behavioral health care for adolescents with six locations across the state.
“Although 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 cared for by Tides Family Services. Every decision was made in the best interest of the children and families,” Jeff Cascione, chair of the St. Mary’s board, said in a statement.
State education officials and the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) have been notified that existing services will be transferred to Tides within the next few weeks, St. Mary’s said. The company has also informed its employees and is trying to “minimize disruption to students’ educational facilities as much as possible,” it said in a statement.
The dismantling of the residential facility began with a December 2023 report from the Office of the Child Advocate, which oversees DCYF, the agency responsible for placing children and youth at St. Mary’s. The report described a months-long investigation in 2023 into abuse, neglect and inadequate mental health care at the home’s facilities, which led to an oversight hearing in the State House and changes in administration and the board.
Immediately after the report, St. Mary’s tried to restore its image by appointing an interim CEO, Charles A. Montorio-Archer, in January. He remained in the post until May 31, when his contract “lapsed,” said Frank McMahon, a St. Mary’s spokesman.
Charles Lombardi, Mayor of North Providence and board member of St. Mary’s, declared March 18, 2024, the “St. Mary’s Home for Children Day”, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.
Further indications of trouble at St. Mary’s came when DCYF announced in June that it would pause its $11 million campus expansion, a construction project approved by Governor Dan McKee in 2023.
St. Mary’s has been unable to accept new patients since 2023 after the DCYF imposed a series of admission freezes on the facility. Before that, St. Mary’s housed the only psychiatric residential treatment facility (PRTF) in Rhode Island. This state-regulated form of intensive psychiatric care is one of the few behavioral health services reimbursed by Medicaid and serves only those under the age of 21.
“The decision to cease operations was driven by the financial challenges associated with maintaining school, community-based and outpatient programs due to the inability to generate additional revenue from inpatient programming,” St. Mary’s said in a statement.
In April, Damaris Teixeira, a former spokeswoman for DCYF, confirmed to Rhode Island Current that all placements in St. Mary’s psychiatric residential treatment units were paid for through Medicaid.
When Tides took over, it submitted a plan to restart operations at the campus’s three inpatient treatment units. The state rejected that plan, resulting in the closure of the current units and the termination of the planned expansion.
“The Tides team has worked tirelessly and invested hundreds of hours to develop a plan, timeline and budget to restart the PRTF and make its vision of developing a continuity of behavioral health services, centralized on one campus, a reality,” said Beth Lemme-Bixby, CEO of Tides, adding that the organization “remains confident” that the Ocean State can achieve the continuity of care it needs for some of its most at-risk youth.
The shortage of state-funded places for children requiring intensive, medium-term psychiatric care – particularly girls – could be partly addressed by a new facility in Exeter, construction of which began last week. The new campus is not currently a residential psychiatric treatment facility, but could apply for that designation at any time.
As of Aug. 15, 27 adolescent girls were in mental health facilities outside the state, said Misty Delgado, DCYF chief of staff. Most of these facilities are in Massachusetts, although some girls are also housed in areas as far away as Tequesta, Florida, and Dothan, Alabama.
Get the morning’s headlines straight to your inbox
