Rhode Island child welfare officials have put a hold on new admissions to Ocean Tides, a Narragansett facility that houses court-involved boys, after an investigation turned up serious concerns about safety and supervision at the campus. The move freezes intake at a residential school for court-involved boys.
The Department of Children, Youth and Families placed admissions on hold following an investigation that revealed serious concerns regarding the safety and supervision of young people enrolled at Ocean Tides, according to The Providence Journal. The outlet reported the findings came from a DCYF spokesman discussing the agency's review of the facility.
Ocean Tides' Narragansett campus operates as a residential program for boys in grades seven through 12 and includes a school component, according to a report filed with the Rhode Island Department of Education. The same report describes the student body as residential youths who are court ordered and referred either by the Rhode Island court system or by the Rhode Island Training School and DCYF itself.
A State Agency Already Under Scrutiny
DCYF is the state agency charged with licensing, monitoring and enforcing regulations for foster homes, residential facilities and other agencies that place children, according to the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families. The Ocean Tides hold arrives as the agency continues to face broader questions about how it places and monitors Rhode Island's most vulnerable youth, both inside the state and beyond its borders.
Rhode Island has used out-of-state residential placements for youths in recent years, according to The Boston Globe.
DCYF's Response to Out-of-State Placement Concerns
DCYF Director Ashley Deckert told the Globe she has not had to pull any youths from out-of-state facilities over safety concerns, and that caseworkers check in on placed children at least once a month. That assurance came even as the state child advocate's own investigation into one in-state facility, St. Mary's Home for Children, uncovered drug overdoses, abuse, neglect and unsafe conditions, the same report noted.
The St. Mary's case offers a recent template for how far these situations can escalate in Rhode Island. State officials moved to remove children from that facility as soon as possible after an eight-month child advocate investigation found abuse, neglect, understaffing and dysfunction, with transition planning underway for 10 children, according to the Globe's earlier reporting. DCYF had already stopped sending children to St. Mary's the previous fall after a boy ran away from the facility and was struck by a Jeep, and the facility's accreditation was later placed on probation by Social Current's Council on Accreditation even as Tides Family Services took over operations there despite having no prior experience running a psychiatric residential treatment program.
Systemic Issues Flagged in Statewide Review
The Ocean Tides hold also lands against the backdrop of a sweeping statewide review of DCYF's child protection work. The Rhode Island Office of the Child Advocate examined 30 child fatalities and 11 near-fatalities involving children from 2019 through 2026 and found significant and persistent concerns within the agency's Child Protective Services division tied to screening, investigations, documentation, staffing and workloads, according to WPRI. That review found 28% of child protective investigators carried caseloads exceeding national best-practice standards, with some handling as many as 24 active investigations at once, and the resulting report issued 76 recommendations for strengthening DCYF's operations.
The Office of the Child Advocate has statutory investigative authority and can review documents and video. Rhode Island has also been working to expand in-state options for youth needing residential treatment: the state recently selected Family Service of Rhode Island to run South County Academy, a 16-bed treatment center for girls ages 13 through 18 in Exeter, under a first-year contract valued at a little over $9.8 million, according to Rhode Island Current. That facility, expected to employ 60 full-time staff, was slated to open this fall after spring construction, as the state noted that 22 adolescent girls remained in out-of-state behavioral health placements as of an April count.
