MANCHESTER, NH — In Case You Missed It, Cinde Warmington shared in a new Union Leader op-ed how Kelly Ayotte’s reckless cuts to the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) weakened oversight and prolonged abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center. 

Cinde also laid out immediate steps to help end the cycle of abuse, including fully restoring the OCA’s oversight capacity and appointing an outside entity to lead an independent investigation into the reports of abuse. 

Read the full op-ed here and below.

Union Leader: Cinde Warmington: Children in custody are being abused. Ayotte cuts made it worse.

• A child at the Sununu Youth Services Center with a broken bone. Children being restrained in ways that put both them and staff at risk. These are recent incidents documented by independent watchdogs. 

• And they’re happening now because the state employees responsible for seeing and stopping this kind of abuse weren’t there — including the one person responsible for reviewing restraint and isolation reports at the facility.

• Let’s be clear: the people responsible for protecting kids in the state’s care lost their jobs because Kelly Ayotte cut them with her reckless budget.

• Governor Ayotte was warned. Child Advocate Cassandra Sanchez spoke out publicly against the impact of budget cuts. She warned of the danger of high caseloads. She said point-blank that with these cuts, her office would no longer be able to review all incident reports from the Sununu Center. 

• Still, Ayotte cut the agency’s funding, weakening the watchdog responsible for protecting these kids. Sanchez recently confirmed that Ayotte’s cuts prevented her staff from visiting the facility in February and allowed the abuse to persist.

• The Child Advocate first notified the Division for Children, Youth and Families of their concerns on March 13. One month later, the Disability Rights Center reported immediate and grave safety concerns for the children at the Sununu Center.

• An entire month passed after this initial report with no action — and there is nothing to suggest the reported abuse has ended. Recent headlines confirm there’s no proof it has stopped.

• What is Kelly Ayotte doing right now to protect the Sununu Center’s staff and children? What additional resources have been allocated to the Child Advocate to monitor the situation and restore adequate review of incident reports? These questions remain unanswered.

• Now Ayotte’s administration is trying to claim no abuse occurred at all — a position rejected by both the Child Advocate and the Disability Rights Center. Worse, the Ayotte administration is attempting to blame the kids.

• A Republican member of the legislative oversight committee got it right: “This comes down to a lack of leadership.” It’s true.

• Here’s what must be done now:

• Restore the Office of the Child Advocate — immediately. Ayotte gutted the agency that exists precisely to stop this kind of abuse. Action must be taken immediately to restore its staff and oversight capacity. Ayotte’s administration must stop denying that abuse occurred. That isn’t protecting anyone; it only makes the problem harder to fix.

• Restore funding to the state Department of Health and Human Services, where officials have said 14 additional full-time youth counselors are needed — positions that cannot be filled because of Ayotte’s spending cuts.

• Mandate real trauma-informed training for frontline facility staff. The escalation in restraints we’re seeing is a training failure. Staff are being placed in dangerous situations alongside children who need therapeutic care. That is a solvable problem, and one that requires immediate attention.

• Appoint an independent investigator — someone who doesn’t serve at the pleasure of the governor. The New Hampshire Attorney General should designate an outside entity to lead an independent investigation. This cannot be an in-house review by those with a political stake in the outcome.

• Accelerate the transition to the Hampstead facility. As Executive Councilor, I learned firsthand of the danger of housing these children in a correctional facility rather than a treatment center, and I repeatedly pushed to transfer them from the Sununu Center. The treatment-centered Hampstead facility is the right path forward. We must prioritize its completion and close the Sununu Center.

• These are urgent, achievable actions that must be taken now. They are the minimum owed to children in state custody and the staff who work with them. We have a duty and a responsibility to get this right.

• Kelly Ayotte is failing to take responsibility and to protect these kids. As governor, I won’t rest until we do both.