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As we begin this holiday weekend, SEA members at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester are beginning a radically changed staffing schedule. 

The "Strategic Operations Assignment Plan", or SOAP (which was originally named the "Lean Staffing Operational Effectiveness Program", or LEAN) was developed by DJJS Director William Fenniman over an eight-month period , without consultation with the direct-care employees whose work schedules are being involuntarily changed.

SOAP is supposed to save $189,000 a year, by eliminating the overlap in shifts that allows youth counselors to do what they're supposed to do -- counsel youth. 

• Director Fenniman's plan would reduce staffing to a bare minimum, and sometimes lower than a bare minimum -- reducing youth counselors' role to just security functions.  
• Director Fenniman wants to eliminate "redundancy" in staffing -- but that overlap is the opportunity for group treatments to be scheduled, kids taken to doctors appointments, and for the youth counselors to have the opportunity to counsel youth. 
• Director Fenniman wants to "achieve an increase in operational effectiveness" by eliminating five direct care positions -- but his plan assumes that the Youth Services Center will always operate at 30% below its capacity.  The Youth Services Center was just renovated, at a cost of more than $35 million, to expand its capacity.  Director Fenniman is taking the facility back to the days before that $35 million upgrade.

All of this, to supposedly save $189,000. 

Director Fenniman hasn't considered the costs of his "savings":

• Once staffing is at bare minimum, overtime will be required to take kids to their doctors' appointments.
• Once staffing is at bare minimum, there will be no available staff to deal with incidents in an appropriate way.  Any unusual event will result in a facility "lockdown".
• Once staffing is at bare minimum, there will be no available staff to conduct treatment sessions during the regular workday.  The facility will become a "warehouse" for troubled youth.  Troubled youth who don't receive treatment don't get any better.  Eventually, they get released from the Center.  And then what happens?

Director Fenniman is essentially eliminating the treatment component of the Youth Services Center, all to save $189,000 a year.

We spent more than $35 million on the new facility; isn’t it worth spending $189,000 on treatment?

Please contact Director Fenniman and tell him his SOAP is all wet.  The citizens of New Hampshire believe in treating our juveniles, not just warehousing them.