Attorney General Charity Clark in 2024. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger Credit: Glenn Russell
United Counseling Service in Bennington has settled with the state over concerns about the organization’s care and supervision for adults with developmental disabilities.
The Bennington County designated agency has agreed to pay the state $483,464 for the damages and agreed to hire an oversight monitor and director of quality for three years in its developmental services division, as a way to resolve an investigation by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office before it went to litigation.
The Bennington County nonprofit contracts with the state’s Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living as one of the state’s “designated agencies,” which provide regional support for adults with developmental disabilities and challenges who are living independently, among other social services. The Vermont Department of Mental Health also contracts with the agency for mental health services, but these concerns are separate from that area of work.
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by Olivia Gieger
January 9, 2026, 6:02 pmJanuary 9, 2026, 6:02 pm
The settlement comes only a few months after the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living demoted the agency to probationary status over similar concerns about the agency’s inadequate staff training and skills, failure to comply with housing inspections and high staff turnover.
The settlement is the result of an investigation by the Vermont Attorney General’s Office’s Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse Unit.
The unit began investigating the agency in 2023 after receiving a complaint from DAIL of substandard Medicaid services for individuals in UCS’s public safety group — those are developmentally disabled people who may pose a public safety risk, some of whom a court has identified as needing care.
The settlement agreement details 10 clients with various developmental disabilities — including three clients with histories of sexual violence against minors or women. These clients require “a high level of care and supervision to maintain the safety of (the client) and the community at large,” the agreement reads.
The agreement says that “service failures” caused a lapse in this standard of care and “caused serious and preventable risks.” Some of the identified failures go back as far as April 2020.
In an email, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office provided more information on some of these oversight lapses. UCS’s oversights included “repeatedly” placing the clients in shared living environments with unrestricted access to children and failing to notify other residents and provide a complete history of the client’s behavior.
The office’s investigation also revealed a number of administrative failures in decision making surrounding the care of these individuals in the public safety group. United Counseling Service did not assign its staff responsibilities in line with their level of training, education and experience, the Attorney General’s Office added.
All the while, UCS continued to bill Vermont Medicaid for these services. The Attorney General’s Office labels these claims as false, because they implied a compliance with the legal standards of care that were not met.
“UCS knew its claims for Medicaid payment for these substandard services to (the 10 clients) were materially false, UCS acted in deliberate ignorance of the fact that its claims were materially false, and UCS acted in reckless disregard of the fact that its claims were materially false,” the settlement reads.
Heidi French, a spokesperson for UCS, told VTDigger that the agency is taking the issues seriously and “took immediate action to improve compliance, reporting, and quality.”
She said the developmental services division has a new leadership team, which is focusing on improved training and oversight and is scaling up quality and compliance review to ensure the organization meets the Medicaid standards. French also confirmed that the agency has hired the two specialists the agreement mandated.
French added that now that this issue has been resolved with the state, the agency considers it closed. The settlement does not change the agency’s probationary status.