Four years ago, Utah legislators enacted sweeping changes to the state’s “troubled teen” industry, placing more oversight and stricter rules for treatment programs.
But since then, seven teenagers have died at Utah congregate care programs, according to Utah Sen. Mike McKell, who championed the legislation in 2021. These deaths have signaled to him, he said, that the measures didn’t go far enough — and more changes were needed.
Taylor Goodridge was one of those teenagers. She died in 2022 on the floor in a hallway at Diamond Ranch Academy from what her family’s attorney has said was an “easily treatable” infection. She begged for help, the attorney said, but never was taken to a hospital.
(Courtesy Dean Goodridge) Taylor Goodridge loved Disney and helping animals, her father said.
Her father, Dean Goodridge, traveled from Washington to plead with Utah legislators on Friday to support a new bill that McKell introduced this week which, among other changes, would fund an independent ombudsman who can investigate complaints from parents or teenagers who are in these programs.
Maybe if someone had been in that position a few years ago, he said, someone would have listened to his daughter when she asked for help.
“If she would have went to a doctor when she was throwing up and everything,” he said, “she’d still be here.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dean Goodridge traveled from Washington to support Utah legislation which he said could have prevented his daughter's death in a teen treatment facility.
Another parent, Katy Silvers, also tearfully pleaded with the members of the Senate Judiciary committee to support the bill. Her son, Biruk, died at Discovery Ranch Academy in November. She described to legislators how she later found out that her son had told his therapist there that he had a detailed plan of how he would die by suicide. She was never informed of these admissions, she said, and he followed through with that plan.
“No staff told us [about his suicidal ideation] or took further action to help him,” she said. “Had we known, we would have been there. We were never given the chance to save our son.”
(Silvers family) Biruk Silvers was 17 when he died at Discovery Ranch in November. His mother said Friday that they sent him to the Utah teen treatment facility thinking it was a safe place he could focus on school and heal from trauma he had experienced when he lived in Ethopia prior to being adopted.
Silvers said they adopted Biruk from Ethiopia hoping to give him a better life — but, she noted, he was “safer in a third world country than he was in care in Utah.”
“I am angry that I am here today,” she said. “I’m angry that laws either don’t exist or aren’t followed. My son’s death was preventable.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Katy Silvers speaks at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday.
SB297 would also create an advisory board with members who would examine admissions criteria for programs, with the goal of ensuring that programs are only taking kids whose needs they can address.
Data from Primary Children’s Hospital suggests that some programs may be taking in children who have higher behavioral needs than they are equipped to address. In 2024, the hospital treated 169 out-of-state children who were brought to Utah to go to congregate care facilities but ended up in the hospital, said Amanda Choudhary, its administrative director, on Friday. Those children represented about 9% of the total pediatric behavioral health inpatient stays that year, she said.
She noted that there are only 53 beds at Primary Children’s behavioral health programs, and treating out-of-state kids is causing a shortage of space for Utah children who need help.
Utah kids, she said, stay an average of seven days in inpatient care. Out-of-state patients have stays that are, on average, 30% longer. Choudhary noted that one girl who came to them from a treatment program lived at Primary Children’s for five months.
“That means we delayed or denied treatment for 22 Utah kids during the time this one out-of-state kid lived with us in the hospital,” she said.
“... We understand and recognize the congregate care industry exists to help kids,” she added. “However, it’s our responsibility to make sure the organizations bringing behaviorally complex children to Utah don’t place undue burden on Utah’s hospitals, emergency departments, and mental health systems — delaying and denying mental health access for Utah’s kids.”
State legislators in 2021 reformed Utah’s youth congregate care laws, the first time in more than 15 years that more oversight was added to the industry. The bill then placed limits on use of restraints, drugs and isolation rooms in youth treatment programs, and boosted funding so licensers could inspect programs more often. That bill was pushed by celebrity Paris Hilton, who has said that she was abused while at Provo Canyon School, overmedicated and sexually assaulted when she was given pelvic exams that had no clear medical purpose. She detailed her experiences to Utah’s Senate Judiciary committee four years ago.
In a letter delivered to the committee on Friday, she said that the deaths since that bill passed have shown that the previous legislation did not go far enough.
“Since that time, more children have suffered, more families have been devastated and tragically more young lives have been lost,” she wrote. “... We must act swiftly and decisively to close the gaps that continue to put children in residential treatment facilities in grave danger.”
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) Paris Hilton wipes her eyes after testifying at a Utah Senate committee in 2021 about the abuse she says she endured at Provo Canyon School.
The committee room on Friday was packed with people donning green ribbons in support of congregate care programs, a showing of public support for programs that wasn’t visible in 2021 when more regulations were first debated by Utah’s Legislature. Several parents and young people on Friday said these programs were life-saving, including Meg Ortiz, who told legislators that those who helped her at a teen treatment program in Utah have become like a second family to her.
“Some of these changes restrict families and their ability to get help that their children need,” she said. “There needs to be a balance.”
The Senate committee voted unanimously to favorably recommend SB297 on Friday. It now goes to the entire Senate for consideration.
