Michigan program for troubled girls is closing. Officials fear more will follow

Vista Maria will close a treatment program for young girls in December, laying off roughly 150 staff and transferring girls
Officials contend state regulations are too broad and the needs of children too great. Some former residents allege mistreatment
Experts fear similar facilities could close too, further eroding services for at-risk youth in Michigan

What had been one of Michigan’s largest treatment programs for troubled girls is slated to close, with facility officials blaming overzealous state regulations but a handful of former residents alleging mistreatment.

The planned December closure of Vista Maria’s Dearborn Heights program marks another loss for critical services in a state with shrinking rehabilitative options for at-risk youth, according to advocates. Vista Maria itself will remain open, however, and continue to offer other services, including foster care and independent living.

And the facility’s CEO warns it could be a harbinger of things to come for similar programs across Michigan.

“I don’t pretend that I have the answers, but we have a systemic crash that’s happening,” Vista Maria CEO Kathy Regan told Bridge Michigan.

Needs of the troubled youth sent to the facility were becoming too great, Regan said. And she contends state regulations have limited its ability to seclude or restrain residents who pose threats to themselves or staff.

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Those rules are handcuffing organizations like Vista Maria that treat residents with major psychological or behavioral issues, Regan said.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services crafted the regulations after a 16-year-old boy died in 2021 after he was restrained by employees at Lakeside Academy, a now-defunct residential treatment program in Kalamazoo.

At the time, the department pointed to the boy’s death as proof the state needed to “improve our policies and practices so that a tragedy like this never happens again.”

With Vista Maria closing its treatment program, multiple Michigan lawmakers say they want to revisit those seclusion and restraint regulations, or overhaul state oversight, to ensure other facilities don’t follow suit. But they have also questioned if there’s enough will given the hyperpartisan political environment.

“We are going to be in really big trouble if we don’t make a change here shortly,” said state Rep. John Roth, R-Interlochen. “I worry very much.”

Dire straits for decades-old program

Vista Maria is one of 99 “child caring institutions” in Michigan, a mixture of public and private facilities that provide court-ordered treatment to more than 460 people as of 2023.

Not all provide the same level of services, and most are centered in metropolitan areas. Just 16 are located north of Mount Pleasant. Many counties have none at all.

Access has already been shrinking: In December 2020, the state had roughly 1,200 youths in residential treatment beds throughout Michigan. By May 2025, there were only 423 beds in total.

Founded in 1883 as a safe haven for women and girls, Vista Maria opened a residential treatment program on its Dearborn Heights campus in 1976.

At one point, the program served as many as 150 girls in metro Detroit. Now, there’s just 10. The state stopped referring girls to Vista Maria in June as the organization worked to train staff and repair “unbelievable destruction” caused by residents within the facility, Regan said.

Roughly $500,000 in repairs later, Vista Maria started taking children again in August. But it stopped again in September after “it became apparent nothing was changing,” Regan said, referencing the significant needs of the children that Vista Maria just couldn’t meet.

An aerial view of the Vista Maria campus. — Vista Maria, child welfare facility first founded in 1883, will close its near 50-year-old residential treatment program this December after its CEO said the needs of the children it receives — in addition to overly broad state regulations — has forced its hand. (Courtesy of Vista Maria)

It didn’t help that, on top of it all, Vista Maria’s insurer told Regan it would be dropping the organization by the end of 2025 due to the number of workers’ compensation claims filed over injuries on the job, she said.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story, including why it stopped referring girls to Vista Maria.

Records show the state cited Vista Maria for multiple licensing violations this fall stemming from complaints earlier in the year, including May, when a young resident said staff had held her “wrists so tight when performing a restraint that her fingernails would dig into her skin.”

Some youth residents said they’d only witnessed staff restrain peers when “necessary,” however.

Other violations included a staff member punching back at a youth resident who had hit first, using inappropriate language around girls at the facility and disrepair that caused an unsafe living environment.

The state required Vista Maria to submit corrective action plans but did not recommend revoking its license, according to records.

Lawsuit planned

On Wednesday, Oakland County attorney Mike Jaafar announced he planned to file a lawsuit against Vista Maria, alleging staff at the facility had a history of abusing and neglecting girls in their care.

A handful of former residents joined Jaafar at a press conference but declined to speak with reporters.

Dearborn Heights Police Chief Ahmed Haidar said officers have responded to more than 500 calls from Vista Maria in just 2025 alone, a number he called “insane.”

“We’re just happy we will not be up there on a daily basis,” Haidar said. “We’re short of staff, so we don’t have a lot of police officers out here. … Officer spending two, three hours at Vista Maria? It takes away from the other residents who really need our assistance.”

Vista Maria declined comment on the planned lawsuit.

Regan said staff at the facility have suffered broken knees and dislocated shoulders while trying to separate fighting children but can’t send them to their rooms to cool off for fear of violating state seclusion guidelines, which require “a child be free from restraint or seclusion of any form” unless “essential to prevent the child from physically harming others.”

“We are licensed as a child caring institution,” Regan said. “That license prevents us from doing the type of interventions a hospital could do.”

By Dec. 19, the official last day for Vista Maria’s residential treatment program, the ten girls remaining in their care will be transferred to other facilities or foster care organizations. Roughly 150 staff will be out of a job.

“As much as we wanted to stay in it for the kids … we felt almost like our existence continued to enable a system that wasn’t changing the way it needed to change,” Regan said.

A building in the Vista Maria campus. — Vista Maria plans to close its Dearborn Heights-based residential treatment program in December. Once a place for at-risk girls, officials with the facility say the needs of children coming into their charge are too great — and state regulations too broad — to continue their work. (Jordyn Hermani/Bridge Michigan)

‘A broken system’

This spring, with signs already pointing to the potential closure of Vista Maria, other residential treatment providers began sounding alarms.

“If Vista Maria goes, so goes any of us,” Dan Gowdy, president and CEO at Wedgewood Christian Services, told lawmakers in May. “The harsh reality is, Michigan’s shrinking capacity means fewer children have access to appropriate, specialized residential treatment.”

Gowdy and other residential treatment facility officials argued state seclusion and restraint regulations — along with the lack of psychiatric beds — were pushing children that needed great psychological care into a system that couldn’t meet their needs.

“For the first time in the 57-year history of Eagle Village, our board is asking, ‘Why are we doing this work?’” said Cathy Prodhomme, president and CEO of the Osceola County residential treatment facility Eagle Village.

“Why are we putting staff at risk? Why are we continuing to try and work with a broken system?”

Roth, the Interlochen Republican, worries that while the state could work to promulgate rules that better define seclusion and restraint practices, it would be a lengthy process that could cause other closures.

State Rep. Jamie Thompson, R-Brownstown, told Bridge she’d “love to work with these facilities” to find middle ground on regulations.

As vice chair of the House Health Policy Committee and a member of the House’s Regulatory Reform Committee, Thompson said either panel would be equipped to take up legislation on the topic if needed.

“God, I want to solve this problem — but it’s so complicated,” she said. “And I know somebody has to know the answer, they just have to take time to make it a priority.”

Absent revised regulations, Roth is floating a more aggressive plan: Break up the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services into two smaller departments — one focused on children, the other on adults.

Only Gov. Gretchen Whitmer could break up the department, however. Her office did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

In the meantime, Vista Maria is at least the second youth residential treatment program to close in Michigan this year after Rite of Passage at the St. Clair Youth Treatment Center closed its doors in April.

Two programs down in the span of a year is a sign of things to come, said Regan. While she didn’t rule out the possibility of Vista Maria resuming residential treatment services at some point in the future, she said she’d want to see regulatory changes first.

“If I don’t have the safety of employees, if I can’t guarantee that I’m really favorably impacting outcomes and kids and families, then it’s not missional for us anymore,” she said. “It doesn’t align with what our values are.”