Email | Print

As a parent of a special needs child and on behalf of other like parents, I am imploring your assistance. A major consolidation of children's mental health facilities with adult mental health facilities is scheduled to take place over the next two years. This is a statewide issue that concerns four out of the only six New York children's mental health facilities that we have available for our children statewide! I am outraged to think that some of our most vulnerable children will be put on campuses with adult psychiatric patients.

The most glaring situation is at Queens Children's Psychiatric Center (QCPC), where it is proposed that children will reside and receive their treatment in the same building with adult patients. Reassurance of a separate entrance does not preclude the inherent danger in mixing children with seriously and persistently mentally ill adults. As a professional in the field of mental health I cannot stress enough the negative impact that this would have upon our kids. What kind of message are we giving to our children? Will this be their future? It will have a detrimental impact on the child's self-esteem and on the parent's sense that their child will be safe.

Over the past 40 years, it has been clearly demonstrated that children cannot be treated as 'little adults.' They require a different constellation of services than adult seriously mentally ill. We have children throughout the six New York State Children's Psychiatric Centers with needs that are unique and unfamiliar to the service providers of adults. Should the services be consolidated as Governor Pataki proposes, the children may in fact be receiving therapeutic treatment from therapists, staff and psychiatrists who are trained for the adult population. Due to his proposed consolidation of administrators, administrators trained for the adult arena could very well be making executive decisions for the children and youth population.

According to Governor Pataki, the increase of monies into home-based/community service programs will assure that the severely emotionally disturbed child will be well taken care of. The harsh reality is that severely emotionally disturbed children require a higher level of service than the home-based community service programs. We have had many children in Queens alone, specifically rejected by community-based support services due to their need of intensive level care that only State Children's Psychiatric Centers provide.

Upon entering 2001, there are significant waiting lists to get children into intermediate care children's mental health facilities and day treatment programs. It is not uncommon for a child to wait two months or longer for admission. Children going through the "revolving door" of acute hospitals are not stabilized sufficiently to make use of community-based services. We need to expand intermediate care mental health facilities for children not diminish them!

Children are not young adults. They are children. That is why we have pediatricians, pediatric nurses and pediatric neurologists, etc. in our medical and psychiatric hospitals. Why is Governor Pataki looking to rob them of their safe therapeutic environments and their trained specialists and place them "in harm's way" on the same campuses or in the same building as emotionally disturbed adults? Is this a question of real estate or children's health? In an age that has so much to offer why is he setting us back 40 years?

On behalf of parents throughout New York State, I again implore your intervention to see that these children are kept safe by providing them with an environment that is designed to meet both their psychiatric needs and their needs as children. This cannot be accomplished by integrating adult and children's psychiatric services on the same campus, let alone in the same building as mentally ill adults. As it stands, these children need to be kept safe from themselves and others, how can this ever be accomplished if Governer Pataki has his way?

Other points to be considered when these fragile children are placed in adult facilities or adult campuses are that they will (1) Share a facility or campus with chronically and persistently mentally ill adults; (2) Share recreation facilities with the adults, which will mean that the children will be exposed to the adult either in crossing paths or in the sharing of the recreation building; (3) Expose the children and their families to the adult patients and compromise their safety during ground privileges that both the adult and children patients are entitled to when they reach certain levels of progress in their treatment plan; (4) Be denied current levels of community services if QCPC's outpatient and day-treatment services are not preserved at their current capacity. QCPC's day-treatment program consists of NYC Board of Education teachers and staff that work collaboratively with the clinical staff of the hospital in the daily educational and psychiatric treatment of severely emotionally disturbed children whom, because of the severity of their illness, cannot attend the public school-based SIE 7 program. This program may be either fragmented or relocated apart from the hospital; therefore, maintaining an optimal level of care will become nearly impossible.

Is this really the best we can provide for our children?