MEMORANDUM
TO: DC Council and Staff
FROM: Leah Castelaz, Esq., Senior Policy Attorney, Children’s Law Center; Joshua A. Miller, PhD, Research & Advocacy Director, Open City Advocates
DATE: May 26, 2026
RE: Directing the Committee’s $500,000 DYRS Oversight Investment to OFC Rather Than a New Council-Internal Body
Summary
The Committee on Youth Affair’s FY27 Budget Recommendations Report correctly identifies the absence of independent DYRS oversight as an urgent gap and proposes a $500,000 transfer to the Committee of the Whole to establish a new oversight body. The same $500,000 should go to the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children instead, with accompanying authorizing legislation to expand OFC’s jurisdiction to all DYRS-committed youth and to establish a Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson. OFC already holds the statutory authorities, the complaint-intake infrastructure, and the institutional posture to host this function. A newly created Council-internal body would have to be granted all three from scratch.
Our organizations bring complementary practice perspectives to the problem: Children’s Law Center represents children and families involved with CFSA, including crossover youth, and Open City Advocates provides legal representation and holistic advocacy for youth committed to DYRS. We see the dual-jacketed and crossover population from both ends of it.
The Recidivism Reduction at DYRS Amendment Act of 2024 (“ROAD Act”), D.C. Law 25-321, remains the District’s enacted solution for restoring full facility-monitoring capacity, and the Council should fund it. But the Committee has not identified the approximately $1.7 million the CFO has certified as necessary to activate the Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (ODCA) function in FY27. It has identified $500,000 for a new Council-internal oversight body. This memo addresses that live budget choice: whether those available dollars should build a necessary DYRS ombuds function inside OFC, an existing independent office with the relevant infrastructure and statutory precedent, or establish a new body whose authority, capacity, and long-term relationship to OFC remain unsettled.
What the Committee Report Gets Right
The October 2025 OIJJFO report on behavioral health services at New Beginnings documented that none of seventeen sampled youth received services addressing the full range of their behavioral health needs. Fifteen had identified substance-use concerns or disorders prior to or during admission; none received a GAIN-Q or other dedicated substance-use assessment. Among those fifteen youth, eleven had no evidence-based substance-use education or treatment group sessions documented in their health records, while the services documented for the remaining four were minimal and not tailored to their needs. Of seventy-two committed youth admitted to New Beginnings in 2023 and subsequently released, fifty-six (78 percent) had further juvenile- or adult-criminal-system involvement. The Report’s own catalogue of recent concerns, including room-confinement data gaps at YSC, insufficient large-muscle activity, security lockdowns at YSC in 2026, and missed classroom time at New Beginnings, reflects exactly the operational drift OIJJFO’s quarterly reporting was structured to surface.
There is a clear need to have capacity, specialization, and experience to get oversight right. The goal is to build the Council’s capacity, through the office already structured for this work, to conduct effective oversight by providing critical focus on District residents impacted by the DYRS system.
OFC Is the Right Destination for the $500,000
OFC is an independent, impartial office responsible to the Council. The Ombudsperson is appointed by the Council Chairman with majority Council approval and serves a five-year term. The statute already employs a specialized-deputy model: the Deputy CFSA Ombudsperson, who must be a licensed independent clinical social worker or equivalent, has primary responsibility for receiving and processing complaints, facilitating communication between CFSA and constituents, and reviewing CFSA policies and practices. OFC operates complaint-intake and administrative infrastructure today.
DYRS exercises authority over committed youth that is analogous in important respects to CFSA’s authority over children in its care. DYRS determines where committed youth live, what treatment they receive, what school they attend, when they return home, and what occurs when a placement fails. The Deputy CFSA Ombudsperson exists because that level of agency power over children and families requires an independent place with systems expertise where complaints can be raised, communication facilitated, and policies reviewed. The same structural logic justifies a Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson, supported by sufficient analyst capacity, with express statutory authority to access facilities and relevant records, interview youth directly, receive and investigate complaints, report systemic findings, and protect youth and families from retaliation. The legal precedent is the Deputy CFSA Ombudsperson role, not a structural change to the Office.
OFC also already holds the operative authorities a new oversight body would have to be granted from scratch. Under D.C. Code § 4-671.06, the Ombudsperson may make inquiries of, and obtain assistance and information from, agencies and their licensed or contracted service and placement providers and entities required to operate under or comply with agency guidance; conduct unannounced inspections of CFSA premises and of licensed or contracted placement providers, including secure facilities and group homes; conduct inspections with prior notice and consent of single-family foster homes, contracted or licensed service providers, and other entities operating under CFSA guidance; and issue subpoenas, enforceable in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia under D.C. Code § 4-671.07, to compel attendance, testimony, and production of records. Authorizing legislation extending OFC’s jurisdiction to DYRS-committed youth would carry those authorities forward to DYRS facilities, placements, and contracted providers. A newly created Council-internal body would begin with none of them, and the Council would need to draft, debate, and enact the equivalent grants of inspection, inquiry, and compulsory-process authority before any oversight work could be done.
The relevant comparison in this budget cycle is not between a $500,000 OFC investment and the approximately $1.7 million necessary to activate the ROAD Act’s ODCA function. The Council should fund the latter when resources permit. The immediate comparison is between directing the identified $500,000 to OFC or directing it to a new Council-internal body. OFC already has complaint-intake capacity, administrative infrastructure, fixed-term independent leadership, a statutory specialized-deputy model, and the inspection, inquiry, and subpoena authorities described above. Those facts make it the more productive home for the funds the Committee has actually identified. OFC itself requested a Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson and two additional Ombuds Analysts at the May 12 hearing, and the Council for Court Excellence, Children’s Law Center, and Open City Advocates all testified in support.
Why a New Council-Internal Body Is the Wrong Destination
The Report’s central argument against expanding OFC is the risk that “mission expansion could derail the meaningful progress the Office has made in its core work over the last fiscal year.” That concern is legitimate, and we share the Committee’s regard for OFC’s CFSA work. Children’s Law Center, whose attorneys serve as guardians ad litem for over half of all children in CFSA’s care, would not support a structural change that put the Office’s CFSA function at risk. A Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson modeled on the Deputy CFSA Ombudsperson uses the statute’s existing specialized-deputy design rather than reorienting the Office’s central mission. The Deputy CFSA Ombudsperson’s existence demonstrates that specialized subject-matter capacity can be placed within OFC without converting the Office into a new standalone agency.
The Report itself acknowledges that the Council-internal vehicle has structural limits. It states that “as a legislative entity, the Committee does not have the proper training, background, or capacity to handle full oversight of DYRS’ secure detention facilities,” and commits to “explore alternative structures for restoring independent oversight of DYRS in FY27, including the feasibility of establishing an independent oversight function that could, over time, be aligned with OFC.” If the eventual destination is alignment with OFC, the more efficient path is to begin building inside OFC now rather than to construct a separate body that must later be merged. The first path uses an office that already has the statutory specialized-deputy design, complaint intake, administrative infrastructure, and inspection and subpoena authority. The second requires the Council to define governance, authority, reporting obligations, access rights, staffing plan, and the relationship to existing oversight bodies before any of the work can begin.
Three further considerations. First, the District has already created the institutional pathways for independent DYRS oversight: the ROAD Act assigns facility-monitoring responsibilities to ODCA subject to appropriations, and OFC is statutorily positioned to host the ombuds function with authorizing legislation. OFC’s existing jurisdiction over children involved with, previously involved with, or otherwise known to CFSA already reaches some DYRS-committed youth, but it does not reach the full DYRS-committed population, which is what authorizing legislation would address. Creating a new Council-internal body before resolving the OFC jurisdiction question risks adding structure without restoring comprehensive oversight. Second, the function the Committee describes requires specialized clinical, data-review, and youth-interviewing expertise that a newly created body would need to recruit and support from inception. Third, the relevant independence distinction is not whether an office sits somewhere within the legislative branch. Both ODCA and OFC are Council-responsible entities. The distinction is whether the oversight function is housed in a statutorily independent office with fixed-term leadership, defined access and reporting authority, and insulation from ordinary committee turnover, or in a new structure built without those protections.
The independence concern Children’s Law Center has raised separately, about creating a freestanding executive District Office for Children rather than leveraging OFC, applies with the appropriate adjustments to a freestanding Council-internal oversight body as well. A standalone agency under either branch would not automatically inherit the cross-systems analytic frame OFC already possesses, and replicates the interagency-coordination problems that motivated the original case for OFC.
What an OFC Deputy Cannot Do, and What That Means
A Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson cannot replicate the full facility-monitoring function that OIJJFO performed and that the ROAD Act assigns to ODCA. Nor would a newly created $500,000 Council-internal body replicate that function. The CFO’s certified estimate for the ODCA monitoring role makes clear that restoring full facility-level oversight requires substantially greater investment than the amount the Committee has identified in this cycle. Routine clinical chart review, educational compliance analysis, and incident-data analysis at the scale OIJJFO operated require the monitoring infrastructure the ROAD Act anticipates. The October 2025 New Beginnings report illustrates what that function produces. The Council should fund that function when it can.
The immediate question is what useful, independent DYRS oversight capacity the identified $500,000 can build now. An OFC Deputy can provide the function OIJJFO never had: receive confidential complaints from committed youth and families, conduct retaliation-protected interviews inside facilities and in community and out-of-state placements, coordinate across CFSA and DYRS for crossover and dual-jacketed youth, and report systemic findings grounded in those individual cases. That is ombuds work, and it is the function the District most urgently lacks for DYRS-committed youth.
What Other Jurisdictions Show
Peer jurisdictions have built ombuds offices that, over time and with sustained investment, perform both individual-access and systemic-monitoring functions. Connecticut and Rhode Island demonstrate two different capacities OFC could grow into.
Connecticut provides the clearest comparator for locating youth-confinement oversight within a child-advocate office. Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate has statutory authority to review facilities and procedures of institutions where juveniles are placed and to report on conditions of confinement for incarcerated youth. Its November 2024 examination of conditions of confinement at Manson Youth Institute documented that the number of youth subjected to chemical agent rose from 9 in 2023 to 26 between January 1 and September 30, 2024, and that all 26 were Black or Hispanic (14 Black, 12 Hispanic). In August 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice entered into an agreement with the Connecticut Department of Correction under which Manson would eliminate disciplinary isolation as a means of managing the behavior of children in its custody.
Rhode Island provides a different but complementary comparator. Rhode Island’s Office of the Child Advocate has statutory authority over the Department of Children, Youth, and Families and conducts fatality reviews of children with DCYF involvement. Its May 2025 Review of Seven Fatalities and Twenty-Three Near Fatalities documented child deaths and near-deaths involving children with DCYF involvement between 2019 and 2024, with recommendations numbered through 56. On May 21, 2025, the Rhode Island House Oversight Committee held a meeting to hear a presentation from the Child Advocate on the report, along with agency responses. Rhode Island’s example does not establish ombuds-office oversight of secure juvenile facilities specifically; its authority covers DCYF. It does show how an independent child-focused office can turn case review into public, cross-agency, legislative-branch accountability.
The need to fund the ROAD Act’s ODCA function remains. These examples show why the present $500,000 investment should be made inside OFC rather than in a temporary parallel body. A Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson would immediately create a youth-and-family accountability pathway the District lacks, while placing new capacity inside an independent child-focused office capable of developing additional systemic expertise over time. The Council should make that investment now and continue pressing toward full ROAD Act funding.
A Note on the Strengthening Capacity and Transparency at DYRS Amendment Act
We support the Committee’s recommendation to fully fund the Strengthening Capacity and Transparency at DYRS Amendment Act of 2025 (B26-0407). Requiring real-time public reporting of population, room-confinement, critical-incident, assault, and recidivism data, and developing an action plan on YSC overcrowding and the awaiting-placement population, are essential measures that neither OFC expansion nor the eventual ODCA function would supply on its own. Our recommendation complements that legislation rather than competing with it.
Recommendation
We respectfully recommend the Committee:
- Redirect the proposed $500,000 transfer to OFC, rather than COW, to establish a Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson with the statutory authorities OFC, CLC, CCE, and OCA have requested. The immediate fiscal choice is where the identified $500,000 can build durable, independent DYRS accountability capacity. OFC is the office with the existing statutory model, administrative infrastructure, complaint-intake function, inspection and subpoena authority, and child-serving-system mandate necessary to put those dollars to use.
- Preserve full funding of the ROAD Act’s ODCA responsibilities as the next major DYRS oversight priority. A Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson would create the youth-and-family accountability pathway the District presently lacks; it would not replace the facility-monitoring and public-reporting function the Council has already enacted through the ROAD Act. The Council should fund that function when fiscal resources permit.
- Decline to create a freestanding Council-internal oversight body in FY27. The identified $500,000 is insufficient to recreate comprehensive OIJJFO-style facility monitoring, whether housed inside or outside the Council. Directing it to a new body would therefore add institutional complexity without activating the ROAD Act function or creating the full ombuds pathway OFC is prepared to provide.
- Fully fund B26-0407 in parallel. Its public-reporting, recidivism-metric, and YSC overcrowding-action-plan provisions are essential complements to OFC expansion in this cycle and to eventual activation of the ROAD Act’s ODCA function.
The Committee has named the oversight gap clearly and committed real budget resources to closing it. Full facility-level oversight requires the Council eventually to fund the ROAD Act. The $500,000 available now should not be spent constructing an incomplete parallel office. It should establish a Deputy DYRS Ombudsperson inside OFC, where it can immediately provide committed youth and their families with an independent avenue for complaint, investigation, and systemic accountability.
Respectfully,
Leah Castelaz, Esq. Senior Policy Attorney Children’s Law Center
Joshua A. Miller, PhD Research & Advocacy Director Open City Advocates