This story was originally published by The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Sign up for The Imprint’s free newsletters here.
Nearly all of the 21 residents have been moved from a treatment facility outside Minneapolis, weeks after state officials found an “imminent risk of harm” to the young people placed there for psychiatric care.
The state’s “immediate order of suspension” takes effect Monday, halting Nexus East Bethel Family Healing’s license to treat youth struggling with severe mental and behavioral health issues. In a notice last month, the Department of Human Services (DHS) said under current conditions, the state “cannot ensure the health and safety of the children served” by the program.
A spokesperson said the youth who had been discharged were placed in new locations, but would not provide details to protect their privacy.
“We are working to support individualized placement plans, while minimizing disruption for affected youth and their families,” read an emailed statement. “Our priority is ensuring the safety, stability and appropriate treatment for these young people.”
On May 15, the department sent a list of violations to Nexus Family Healing CEO Michelle Murray. It included failing to protect residents’ safety and basic rights; poor supervision; suspected maltreatment that was not reported; poor administration of medication; poorly trained staff; and treatment plans that did not “ensure the resident’s treatment needs could be met.” In addition, the state found the facility was “not kept in good repair.”
The letter stated all youth had to be moved from the treatment center by May 29, but two subsequent extensions allowed the facility to stay open until June 15.
Nexus Family Healing — a $99 million nonprofit based in Plymouth — serves more than 4,600 children and families annually in four states with an array of residential programs and foster care and adoption services, according to its website.
In a statement sent to The Imprint, a Nexus spokesperson said the agency has appealed Minnesota’s orders.
“Nexus is in ongoing discussions with DHS and has initiated its own internal investigation at East Bethel under the direction of the CEO, Dr. Michelle Murray,” the statement read. The agency is also “developing and implementing new protocols to address identified areas for improvement. Our goal is to continue serving youth at East Bethel, providing the highest quality of care and safety.”
The suspension of the facility’s license comes less than three years after Nexus Family Healing started operating its East Bethel site, about 30 miles north of Minneapolis. The facility was licensed to serve youth ages 10 through 21.
Since East Bethel opened, it has incurred more than three dozen violations and been subjected to multiple corrective action plans, according to an Imprint review of state licensing documents. The facility has also been fined a total of $1,400 by the Department of Human Services, mostly because it did not have enough staff to meet state requirements.
One fine resulted from a May 19, 2025 incident, when a resident was left unsupervised in a bathroom for 45 minutes, according to the fine order. Because no staff person checked in on the resident identified as C, the young person was allowed “to harm him/herself by wrapping strips of cloth around his/her neck causing his/her face to turn ‘blue.’”
In December, the facility was ordered to pay $200 in that case because C’s “Individualized Crisis Management Plan” required staff members “to have near constant verbal checks with him/her when s/he was using the bathroom or taking a shower because many of the C’s prior self-harm incidents occurred in the bathroom.”
In other instances, powerful antipsychotic drugs were not being properly administered or documented, and children were being physically restrained without proper oversight.
Violations not uncommon
To qualify for placement at a psychiatric residential treatment facility, young people must have a mental health diagnosis and either show signs of severe aggression or be a risk to themselves or others. Their families or caregivers must have “exhausted other community-based mental health services,” according to a state website.
In addition to East Bethel, three other local psychiatric residential treatment facilities serve youth placed by parents and the foster care system: Hoffmann Center in Saint Peter, Northwood Children’s Services’ West Campus in Duluth and Grafton Integrated Health Network Minnesota in Cold Spring.
Each of those facilities has also been issued correction orders, but none have been shut down, according to state licensing documents going back four years. Issues focused in part on their use of psychotropic medications, low staffing ratios and failure to review the use of physical restraints.
A 19-page letter sent to Hoffman Center in 2024 detailed poor conditions at the facility, where investigators found a dining room with food and garbage remnants on the tables, floors, and walls, and seclusion rooms with stains, “torn and ripped wall paddings, and torn floor tiles,” as well as a strong mold and mildew odor in the recreation building. The facility was also reprimanded for poor documentation of medications’ side effects.
Last month, Northwood Children’s Services received a letter from the state detailing roughly 25 violations that needed correction. Grafton Integrated Health Network Minnesota has received more than 70 correction orders from state officials since 2022, and the facility was issued a $200 fine last year for failing to background-check a staff member. State-issued licensing documents show that in 2022, the facility waited months to report suspect abuse or neglect, failed to give the state timely access to files, and hired unqualified staff.
Exacerbating existing shortage
The young people placed in these psychiatric residential treatment facilities by parents or the foster care system have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, autism, severe depression, suicidal thoughts or a mix of additional diagnoses. They typically stay for roughly six months, said Eren Sutherland, director of the Minnesota Disability Law Center.
The East Bethel closure comes when many families and county agencies are already struggling to find treatment beds. It is not uncommon for young people in the state to end up “boarded” or subjected to overstays in hospitals — approved for discharge but with nowhere safe to go.
The closure of East Bethel exacerbates the problem. But it also has an impact on patients.
“Disrupting somebody’s services is hard on kids. It’s hard on anybody to have a change in their schedule, to have a change in their therapist, a change in their doctors,” Sutherland said. “My concern really goes out to the kids and the families who are going to be put in this position to try to find adequate and appropriate services.”
The Department of Human Services’ letter last month to the East Bethel facility CEO echoes state investigative reports and correction orders over the past two years. They began the year after it opened in late 2023, when investigators reported that facility staff failed to conduct proper reviews and follow up when physical restraints were used and did not obtain informed consent from youth given antipsychotic medications.
An investigator for the Office of the Inspector General’s licensing division — a unit within the Department of Human Services — substantiated one allegation of child maltreatment from December 2024. The victim had a history of sexual abuse and diagnoses of anxious personality and borderline personality disorders and ADHD. The investigator noted the resident — identified as “AV” for “alleged victim” — “enjoyed visits with family, activities like bowling, swimming, and listening to music.”
But a staff person showed AV videos of their sexual encounters, the investigator wrote, including one video showing the staff member “being tied up by her/his partner” and a second showing the two having sex. “The videos made the AV uncomfortable to watch and the AV wanted to sleep in more and had a loss of appetite,” state documents show, and “triggered the AV’s history with sexual abuse.”
The staff member was also found to have provided AV “with a peach mango flavored nicotine vape pen,” which the patient was told to later flush down the toilet.
The state determined the staff member’s “conduct of giving the AV a vape, having an inappropriate discussion with the AV, and showing the AV sex videos was inconsistent with the standards of a professional caregiver in a facility licensed by the Department of Human Services.”
Yet the employee — who denied the allegations, and would not speak with the Office of Inspector General — was not disqualified from “providing direct care services.” The staffer was later notified that one more such violation will disqualify them from working at the facility.
Early the next year, the state found previous corrective action plans in some instances had not been completed. Staff had not been properly trained on maltreatment reporting and the facility had not met requirements for discharge planning.
Then, in the spring of 2025, new violations were found, having to do with poor oversight of psychotropic drugs and administrative reviews of restraint practices. On March 8, the facility was fined $1,200 for failing to meet the required staff-to-resident ratio.
In another violation detailed in state licensing documents from November, an investigator determined that two months prior, a staff member cursed and tussled inappropriately with a resident. It began when the resident started destroying property, the investigation found. The staffer initially tried to block the young person, who was trying to hit them. The two fell backwards and grabbed at each other’s hair, the documented account states.
Subsequently, the resident reported feeling “really scared, described the incident as painful and traumatizing, and had a panic attack,” an investigator wrote. The investigator said the staffer acted in a way that “represented substantial risk of physical or mental injury” to the resident.
A facility review determined the staffer had failed to follow their policies. They had left the facility by the time the investigator finalized the report.
