A publicly funded social service nonprofit in Bennington County will pay the state of Vermont $483,464 to settle allegations that its substandard services put clients and the public at risk, the Vermont attorney general\u2019s office announced Thursday.<\/p>\n
United Counseling Services of Bennington County is one of 10 \u201cdesignated agencies\u201d<\/a> that are contracted by the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living (DAIL) to provide development services on the state\u2019s behalf. Medicaid is the program\u2019s main funding source.<\/p>\n The settlement follows a two-year long investigation by the attorney general\u2019s office that began when it received a complaint from DAIL about UCS\u2019s oversight of Vermonters with developmental disabilities who pose serious safety risks<\/a>. As part of the agreement<\/a>, UCS \u201cdoes not dispute\u201d that its failures caused \u201cserious and preventable risks\u201d to the public and their clients, some of whom had a history of sexualized violence.<\/p>\n UCS has also agreed to put several organizational reforms into place. They include paying for an external monitor, hiring a new director of quality to take over day-to-day management of the developmental services division and publicly reporting substantive corrections for up to three years.<\/p>\n \u201cThe safety of all Vermonters is of the utmost concern in Medicaid fraud investigations and enforcement efforts, and I want to thank my team and our partners at the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living for their joint efforts in resolving this matter,\u201d Attorney General Charity Clark said in a statement.<\/p>\n The state could potentially cancel its contract with UCS for developmental services altogether. DAIL has placed UCS on \u201cprovisional designation with intent to de-designate,” according to Rebecca Silbernagel, the department\u2019s principal assistant.<\/p>\n The non-profit was on a lower-level probationary status \u201cfor nearly two years after repeated failures to achieve the consistent delivery of quality services,\u201d Silbernagel wrote in an email.<\/p>\n Another update to UCS\u2019s developmental services contract is expected before mid-June, according to Silbernagel. Separately, the nonprofit also provides substance use and mental health services on behalf of the state, but these are unaffected by DAIL\u2019s enforcement actions.<\/p>\n In a statement, UCS CEO Lorna Mattern said that the nonprofit had \u201cworked collaboratively\u201d with DAIL \u201cthroughout this process, and have been taking corrective action steps to improve compliance, reporting, and quality across multiple areas in the agency.\u201d<\/p>\n Vermont\u2019s designated agencies are perennially troubled. And Lindsey St. Amour, the executive director of Disability Rights Vermont, said that while she was \u201cpleased to see this level of oversight and monitoring with regard to UCS,\u201d the state had a \u201clarger role to play\u201d in better funding \u2014 and more robustly regulating \u2014 the private entities that deliver such services.<\/p>\n \u201cDRVT is concerned that the unfortunate circumstances that gave rise to this lawsuit in the first place are still happening in other parts of our state,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A publicly funded social service nonprofit in Bennington County will pay the state of Vermont $483,464 to settle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-520322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}