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Wayside Plans Framingham Campus

By Peter Reuell, MetroWest Daily News
Sunday, January 6, 2002

FRAMINGHAM - A major MetroWest non-profit agency that treats and houses abused and neglected children may build a headquarters campus that would consolidate as many as six group homes on a parcel north of Rte. 9. The Wayside Youth and Family Support Network is currently eyeing a 12.5-acre property off Lockland Avenue as a possible location and should complete its initial assessment within the next few weeks, according to Wayside President Eric Masi.
"It's been something we've talked about and dreamed about for probably about five years," Masi said this week of a Framingham-area campus.
Wayside is currently headquartered in downtown Framingham and serves more than 5,000 people throughout Greater Boston and the Blackstone Valley. Its services include counseling, prevention education and group homes for children through the Department of Social Services. The Framingham site, north of the State Police headquarters, isn't the first the human-services agency has looked at, though. Last year, Wayside bid on the former Framingham sewer beds, located in Natick, but lost out to a higher bidder. Masi, though, said the agency is confident the Lockland Avenue property will fit its needs.
"We're very hopeful about this one," he said.
Though the agency hasn't made a final decision on whether to purchase the property, Masi emphasized that Wayside is prepared to work with neighbors to address their concerns about the multi-building campus.
"It's very important for us to be open and respectful of our neighbors, because we know they have very important and legitimate questions about who we are and the services we provide," he said.
If the agency does decide to build on the property, though, the end result would more closely resemble a college campus or a small private school than an institution. An early version of the project, estimated at between $10 and $12 million, would include three two-story, dormitory-like buildings, each housing about two dozen teens. The project would also include a school and administration building, a gymnasium and areas for a baseball diamond and soccer field. Wayside is not the first agency in the state, or even in MetroWest, to establish itself in a campus setting. A handful of other agencies, such as the Brandon Residential Treatment Center in Natick - which also works with troubled youths - have similar programs, Masi said.
Wayside's campus would, however, be designed from the start for such purposes.
"It's a huge undertaking," said Wayside Vice President Bowie Johnson. "I don't know of anybody in Massachusetts who has built from the ground up."
Wayside now operates some 15 group homes scattered throughout MetroWest, including eight in Framingham and Marlborough alone. Establishing the campus will give Wayside a chance to consolidate at least seven of those locations, Masi said.
"We are forever working with facilities that were designed for another purpose," he said. "Most of our facilities are retrofitted homes or office sites."
The campus also gives the agency a chance to offer more options to its clients - particularly when it comes to recreation, Masi said.
"Nobody's got a gym (in their house)," he said. "Everybody's got a weight bench in the basement. If you put things together you can have a decent athletic facility."
The campus idea even makes sense from an economic point of view, Johnson said.
By consolidating a handful of group homes into one location, Wayside could save thousands in staff costs by eliminating overlapping positions, particularly in administrative staff.
Wayside officials said the children in their care would benefit from the campus setting, starting with an expanded array of services.
"You'll get more of a combination of services," Johnson said. "You almost can pick from a menu of services."
In the agency's current settings, communication between staff at various locations can sometimes be difficult. In the campus setting, however, staff could easily consult each other on various cases, Johnson said.
"You don't have the opportunity for the staff to talk to each other sometimes," she said of the widespread location of current group homes.
The image of the campus - wide lawns dotted with trees and dormitory-like buildings - will also serve to ease the concerns of teens who stay at the facility.
"It does make a huge difference for how people feel about going there," Johnson said. "It just gives a feeling of comfort. That stuff counts, it counts for a lot."
At least one Wayside group home attracted scrutiny in recent years. This past summer, a DSS investigation found "reasonable cause" that staff members at the Wayside Carriage House in Marlborough engaged in sexual acts with three teens at the group home. And in 1998, the same facility came under fire when a 16-year-old boy died while being restrained by two staff members. The Wayside workers were cleared of wrongdoing, and the group home is now run by a different agency.
Wayside officials in the past have said the children they serve in group homes are often DSS cases involving abuse or neglect, rather than teens charged with criminal offenses in the Department of Youth Services system.

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