Showing posts with label Budget Cuts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budget Cuts. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
ASSAULT ON HUMAN SERVICES
Anton Community Newspapers • 132 East 2nd Street • Mineola, NY 11501
ASSAULT ON HUMAN SERVICES
by Andrew Malekoff© September 20, 2012
September 5, 2012 marked two months since 7.3 million dollars, earmarked to support human services, were shifted to the general fund. We were told that this was due to the Nassau County legislature’s failure to pass $41 million in bonding for property tax refunds. But, it is not that simple.
How did all of this get started? In 2009, then-County Executive Tom Suozzi "enlisted" the county's most vulnerable citizens as unpaid lobbyists to advocate for red-light cameras, cigarette taxes and traffic-violation reform. Mr. Suozzi threatened scores of agencies serving tens of thousands of youths and families that they would be closed down or crippled unless the revenue enhancers were passed through Albany.
Red-light camera legislation passed and local agencies were assured, by unanimous vote of the full Nassau County legislature, that related revenues would become a sustainable source funding for these services. Three years later, that agreement is null and void. Our young people are now the collateral damage in a political war over bonding and redistricting.
More than two months have passed since the July 5, 2012 cuts to human services, which included $1.75 million of chemical dependency treatment funding. Despite extensive testimony, protests and media coverage, not a thing has changed. Advocates, young and old, have held press conferences, prayer vigils and a symbolic funeral for youth services. On August 6, several young people and adults attended a legislative meeting symbolically bound, gagged and blindfolded to point out that youth services were being held hostage.
What is the outcome of all of this activity and attention? Democrat and Republican legislators continue to point fingers and holler at one another in front of hundreds of disbelieving youths and family members who have become regular attendees at legislative meetings as well as activists in addressing this issue.
Youth services organizations that depend almost exclusively on County funds will close in a short time. Agencies with more diversified funding may not go out of business, but will have to shutter critical services such as after-school and summer programs as well as suicide, pregnancy, gang and drug-prevention programs that keep kids safe, provide enriching activities and offer a sense of belonging and relationships with caring adults during the non-school hours.
The developmental tasks necessary for adolescents in our culture to become healthy, functioning adults require great effort and time and more than parent and school support alone. These tasks include forging relationships with peers and adults that lead to the achievement of emotional independence from parents, developing a healthy sexual identity, building a capacity for greater intimacy with peers, learning skills and selecting an economic career; also developing a moral value and an ethical system to guide one’s behavior as well as desiring and employing socially responsible behavior.
Adolescence today is an age of particular vulnerability, a time in which youngsters are experiencing the sexual awakenings of puberty earlier than ever while facing increasing social and educational demands, and experimenting with more freedom, autonomy and choice than ever before. The politically-motivated de-funding of youth services is therefore an attack on the family.
Nassau County’s broken promises and its propensity to use vulnerable young people as pawns in promoting partisan political interests represents a moral failing and a lack of leadership. Our elected representatives on both sides of the aisle should be ashamed of themselves for putting our most vulnerable young people in the political crosshairs. Who among them will stand and deliver to put an end to this madness?
**Andrew Malekoff is Executive Director / CEO, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center
Roslyn Heights, New York 11577 and author of Group Work with Adolescents: Principles and Practice (Guilford Press), now in its second edtion. E-mail: amalekoff@northshorechildguidance.org
Sunday, August 5, 2012
SAVE OUR SERVICES
SAVE OUR SERVICES
The Olympic games in London have inspired us with the fetes of 15-year-old swimming sensation Katie Ledecky and the diminutive dynamo of gymnastics, 17-year-old Gaby Douglas. At the same time, in Nassau County, there is a game of political cat-and-mouse being played by our elected officials who have put tens of thousands of vulnerable young people in the legislative crosshairs.
The July 6th funding cuts to essential human services provide a chilling insight into the insidious nature of Nassau County politics. The Democratic minority on the Nassau County Legislature chose not to authorize $41 million in borrowing for tax refunds. Republicans claim that the democrats are withholding their votes as a ploy to get new election districts redrawn. Democrats state that the funding cut is a policy decision by Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.
In an attempt to draw wider attention about the impact of the budget cuts, STRONG Youth, Inc., a gang-prevention program in Hempstead that lost all of its county funding, staged a symbolic funeral for youth services at the Hempstead Pentecostal Church on August 2nd. I attended the funeral and participated in the processional motorcade led by two hearses that traveled past the legislative building in Mineola and concluded in a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Some critics accused STRONG of being too extreme. Others called the symbolic funeral disrespectful of the dead. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The funeral, procession and press conference were impeccably organized in less than a week by STRONG social workers and volunteers, young and old, who galvanized a complex network of children, teenagers, parents (including parents of murdered children), crime victims, clergy, colleagues, community leaders and local businesses.
The only thing extreme about the “funeral” was in the exceptional orchestration and staging of an event aimed at exposing the gap between what we know and what we are told by government officials. The skills used to organize this event are the same ones that are used by professional social workers to develop and implement an exemplary gang prevention program that aims to engage young people to become successful students and active citizens in community affairs. Nassau County should not be eliminating programs like STRONG, they should be celebrating and promoting it as a best practice in gang prevention.
One of the speakers at the press conference was a young woman, Amory Sepúlveda, who testified, “When I was 19-years-old I was the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting that resulted in [my] never being able to walk again. I was hurt physically, emotionally and thought my life was over. With the help of county youth services I am now a college graduate in pursuit of a master’s degree [in social work]. I’ve shared my story, changing the lives of thousands of youth in Nassau County.”
The shame of Nassau County and its loss of humanity are evident in our elected representatives’ failure to value, respect, uplift, defend and safeguard all of the County's children when having the power to do so. Our elected officials have demonstrated, notwithstanding their ever-present availability for photo ops designed to depict a contrary impression, that they have little respect for our most vulnerable citizens.
When our elected representatives implement politically-motivated cost cutting they miss the human toll and they miss the fiscal consequences of their decisions. Our elected representatives miss that they are cutting cost-effective services that keep people out of jail, emergency rooms and costly psychiatric institutions.
During harsh economic times when all of our best efforts are needed to preserve families and save lives, the recent cuts to human services will not only destroy families but increase the long term burden to the taxpayer. And, it will bear an even greater cost in lives lost, kids plucked from their homes and families splintered and destroyed.
Andrew Malekoff, Long Beach
The author is executive director of North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights.
The Olympic games in London have inspired us with the fetes of 15-year-old swimming sensation Katie Ledecky and the diminutive dynamo of gymnastics, 17-year-old Gaby Douglas. At the same time, in Nassau County, there is a game of political cat-and-mouse being played by our elected officials who have put tens of thousands of vulnerable young people in the legislative crosshairs.
The July 6th funding cuts to essential human services provide a chilling insight into the insidious nature of Nassau County politics. The Democratic minority on the Nassau County Legislature chose not to authorize $41 million in borrowing for tax refunds. Republicans claim that the democrats are withholding their votes as a ploy to get new election districts redrawn. Democrats state that the funding cut is a policy decision by Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.
In an attempt to draw wider attention about the impact of the budget cuts, STRONG Youth, Inc., a gang-prevention program in Hempstead that lost all of its county funding, staged a symbolic funeral for youth services at the Hempstead Pentecostal Church on August 2nd. I attended the funeral and participated in the processional motorcade led by two hearses that traveled past the legislative building in Mineola and concluded in a press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Some critics accused STRONG of being too extreme. Others called the symbolic funeral disrespectful of the dead. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The funeral, procession and press conference were impeccably organized in less than a week by STRONG social workers and volunteers, young and old, who galvanized a complex network of children, teenagers, parents (including parents of murdered children), crime victims, clergy, colleagues, community leaders and local businesses.
The only thing extreme about the “funeral” was in the exceptional orchestration and staging of an event aimed at exposing the gap between what we know and what we are told by government officials. The skills used to organize this event are the same ones that are used by professional social workers to develop and implement an exemplary gang prevention program that aims to engage young people to become successful students and active citizens in community affairs. Nassau County should not be eliminating programs like STRONG, they should be celebrating and promoting it as a best practice in gang prevention.
One of the speakers at the press conference was a young woman, Amory Sepúlveda, who testified, “When I was 19-years-old I was the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting that resulted in [my] never being able to walk again. I was hurt physically, emotionally and thought my life was over. With the help of county youth services I am now a college graduate in pursuit of a master’s degree [in social work]. I’ve shared my story, changing the lives of thousands of youth in Nassau County.”
The shame of Nassau County and its loss of humanity are evident in our elected representatives’ failure to value, respect, uplift, defend and safeguard all of the County's children when having the power to do so. Our elected officials have demonstrated, notwithstanding their ever-present availability for photo ops designed to depict a contrary impression, that they have little respect for our most vulnerable citizens.
When our elected representatives implement politically-motivated cost cutting they miss the human toll and they miss the fiscal consequences of their decisions. Our elected representatives miss that they are cutting cost-effective services that keep people out of jail, emergency rooms and costly psychiatric institutions.
During harsh economic times when all of our best efforts are needed to preserve families and save lives, the recent cuts to human services will not only destroy families but increase the long term burden to the taxpayer. And, it will bear an even greater cost in lives lost, kids plucked from their homes and families splintered and destroyed.
Andrew Malekoff, Long Beach
The author is executive director of North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Andrew Malekoff
Submitted to Long Island Newsday on July 16, 2012
The recent spate of politically-motivated funding cuts to essential human services and the ritual recruitment of our neediest citizens as unpaid lobbyists offers a chilling insight into how far Nassau County leadership has fallen.
The Democratic minority on the Nassau County Legislature voted four times against authorizing $41 million in borrowing for tax refunds. Republicans claimed that the Democrats are using their voting leverage to get new election districts redrawn. Democrats asserted that the cuts represented a policy decision by Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.
In 2009, then-County Executive Tom Suozzi, whose motto for human services was "No Wrong Door," cut funding from 43 agencies serving over 60,000 people. In so doing, he "enlisted" the county's most vulnerable citizens to become his unpaid lobbyists to advocate for red-light cameras, cigarette taxes and traffic violation reform.
Red-light camera legislation was approved in Albany and local agencies were given bi-partisan assurance of restored and sustainable funding. That “reserved” fund was taken off the table by County Executive Ed Mangano as a consequence of the county legislature’s failure to pass the bonding.
When our elected representatives implement politically-motivated cost cutting they demonstrate a loss of empathy. What’s worse, is that they lose all reason. They miss the human toll and they miss the fiscal consequences of their decisions. They are relegated to finger-pointing, tantruming two-year olds hell-bent on getting what they want at any cost.
Our elected representatives miss that they are cutting cost-effective services that keep people out of jail, emergency rooms and costly addictions and mental health institutions. They discount the lives that will be saved by preventing suicide and drug overdoses. They ignore the human and fiscal benefits that quality services bring in effectively addressing homelessness, hunger, runaways, gangs, unemployment, family crises, eating disorders, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy and much more.
Our elected officials have demonstrated, notwithstanding their ever-present availability for photo ops designed to depict a contrary impression, that they have little respect for our most vulnerable citizens. Too harsh an assessment? Let’s face it, behavior talks.
Our services are referred to as “discretionary,” connoting that they are dispensable; which, we have learned, they surely are. We are reminded of this on a regular basis when our funds are slashed and our people are taken hostage to lobby for bonding or red-light cameras and, I am sure, in time, for gambling.
Moody’s Investors Service offers an opinion about the county’s general creditworthiness, or expected loss. I wonder how Nassau County would stack up if there was Moody’s Vulnerable Citizens Service that judged how we treat our most at-risk teenagers or seniors.
During harsh economic times when all of our best efforts are needed to preserve families, the recent cuts to human services will increase the long term burden to the taxpayer. And, it will bear an even greater cost in lives lost, kids plucked from their homes and families splintered and destroyed.
It is time for the people who we elected to represent us to get real.
Andrew Malekoff
Mr. Malekoff is executive director and chief executive for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, New York
Andrew Malekoff
Submitted to Long Island Newsday on July 16, 2012
The recent spate of politically-motivated funding cuts to essential human services and the ritual recruitment of our neediest citizens as unpaid lobbyists offers a chilling insight into how far Nassau County leadership has fallen.
The Democratic minority on the Nassau County Legislature voted four times against authorizing $41 million in borrowing for tax refunds. Republicans claimed that the Democrats are using their voting leverage to get new election districts redrawn. Democrats asserted that the cuts represented a policy decision by Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.
In 2009, then-County Executive Tom Suozzi, whose motto for human services was "No Wrong Door," cut funding from 43 agencies serving over 60,000 people. In so doing, he "enlisted" the county's most vulnerable citizens to become his unpaid lobbyists to advocate for red-light cameras, cigarette taxes and traffic violation reform.
Red-light camera legislation was approved in Albany and local agencies were given bi-partisan assurance of restored and sustainable funding. That “reserved” fund was taken off the table by County Executive Ed Mangano as a consequence of the county legislature’s failure to pass the bonding.
When our elected representatives implement politically-motivated cost cutting they demonstrate a loss of empathy. What’s worse, is that they lose all reason. They miss the human toll and they miss the fiscal consequences of their decisions. They are relegated to finger-pointing, tantruming two-year olds hell-bent on getting what they want at any cost.
Our elected representatives miss that they are cutting cost-effective services that keep people out of jail, emergency rooms and costly addictions and mental health institutions. They discount the lives that will be saved by preventing suicide and drug overdoses. They ignore the human and fiscal benefits that quality services bring in effectively addressing homelessness, hunger, runaways, gangs, unemployment, family crises, eating disorders, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy and much more.
Our elected officials have demonstrated, notwithstanding their ever-present availability for photo ops designed to depict a contrary impression, that they have little respect for our most vulnerable citizens. Too harsh an assessment? Let’s face it, behavior talks.
Our services are referred to as “discretionary,” connoting that they are dispensable; which, we have learned, they surely are. We are reminded of this on a regular basis when our funds are slashed and our people are taken hostage to lobby for bonding or red-light cameras and, I am sure, in time, for gambling.
Moody’s Investors Service offers an opinion about the county’s general creditworthiness, or expected loss. I wonder how Nassau County would stack up if there was Moody’s Vulnerable Citizens Service that judged how we treat our most at-risk teenagers or seniors.
During harsh economic times when all of our best efforts are needed to preserve families, the recent cuts to human services will increase the long term burden to the taxpayer. And, it will bear an even greater cost in lives lost, kids plucked from their homes and families splintered and destroyed.
It is time for the people who we elected to represent us to get real.
Andrew Malekoff
Mr. Malekoff is executive director and chief executive for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, New York
Saturday, October 31, 2009
TESTIMONY ON GOVERNOR PATERSON'S PROPOSED BUDGET CUTS TO HUMAN SERVICES
New York State Hearing on Governor Paterson’s Proposed Budget Cuts
Brookhaven Town Hall Auditorium
Farmingville, New York
Testimony by Andrew Malekoff, Executive Director / CEO
North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center
480 Old Westbury Road
Roslyn Heights, New York 11577
Representing the Long Island Coalition of Behavioral Health Providers, Inc.
400 Garden City Plaza – Suite 202
Garden City, NY 11530
October 27, 2009
Good afternoon senators. My name is Andrew Malekoff and I am the executive director and CEO for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, New York. I am here representing the Long Island Coalition of Behavioral Health Providers.
More low income and middle-class families than ever before are in need of low cost, high quality community-based mental health care. Yet, the New York State Office of Mental Health is implementing a plan for these critical services that will result in a system of community care where only those children and families with Medicaid “fee for service” insurance coverage will be assured ongoing access to care. At the same time, Governor Paterson has proposed cutting local assistance dollars for behavioral health services.
The erosion of local assistance funding in conjunction with the march towards clinic reform is the perfect storm for the destruction of children’s community-based mental health services on Long Island. There will be no real cost savings left in the wake of this storm; only the incalculable cost of young lives being lost and set adrift, and families being splintered and destroyed.
For more than half a century North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center has been a proud provider of community-based mental health services on Long Island. The lethal mix of clinic reform and decades of diminished local assistance dollars portends a mental health delivery system that will no longer assure access to mental health care for children regardless of their parents’ ability to pay.
A once proud community-based mental health care system that was “for one and for all” is being systematically deconstructed into a depleted “Medicaid-only, others need not apply” delivery system.
New York State has a statutory responsibility to make sure that its most vulnerable citizens, our children, get care regardless of their families’ economic status. Instead, what we are getting is institutionalized classism that cuts the middle class and working poor out of the behavioral health equation.
Many children with what seems like ample health insurance coverage will no longer receive behavioral healthcare services from community clinics as a result of the lack of parity between government (Medicaid) rates and rates paid by commercial insurers for behavioral health care. And, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the new Federal Mental Health Parity Act will not help. Offering unlimited clinic visits at substandard rates is not parity, but rather a barrier that denies access to the middle class and working poor. Commercial insurers that cannot demonstrate an adequacy of network for behavioral health care should have their licenses revoked by the State Department of Insurance.
Community clinics have always been a mainstay in addressing the needs of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances and their families. Private psychotherapists and counselors, with rare exception, cannot and afford to offer the labor intensive work necessary to properly serve families that are struggling with serious emotional disturbances.
We call on New York State, in conjunction with local government, to restore and enhance rather than slash local assistance funding – a partnership between local and state government, the local community and client-consumer. Action must to be taken now to reverse the course of clinic reform and to preserve local assistance funding before it is too late.
Thank you, senators, for holding this hearing and for giving me the opportunity to testify before the committee.
Andrew Malekoff is executive director and chief executive officer for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, Roslyn Heights, New York email: amalekoff@northshorechildguidance.org
Brookhaven Town Hall Auditorium
Farmingville, New York
Testimony by Andrew Malekoff, Executive Director / CEO
North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center
480 Old Westbury Road
Roslyn Heights, New York 11577
Representing the Long Island Coalition of Behavioral Health Providers, Inc.
400 Garden City Plaza – Suite 202
Garden City, NY 11530
October 27, 2009
Good afternoon senators. My name is Andrew Malekoff and I am the executive director and CEO for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, New York. I am here representing the Long Island Coalition of Behavioral Health Providers.
More low income and middle-class families than ever before are in need of low cost, high quality community-based mental health care. Yet, the New York State Office of Mental Health is implementing a plan for these critical services that will result in a system of community care where only those children and families with Medicaid “fee for service” insurance coverage will be assured ongoing access to care. At the same time, Governor Paterson has proposed cutting local assistance dollars for behavioral health services.
The erosion of local assistance funding in conjunction with the march towards clinic reform is the perfect storm for the destruction of children’s community-based mental health services on Long Island. There will be no real cost savings left in the wake of this storm; only the incalculable cost of young lives being lost and set adrift, and families being splintered and destroyed.
For more than half a century North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center has been a proud provider of community-based mental health services on Long Island. The lethal mix of clinic reform and decades of diminished local assistance dollars portends a mental health delivery system that will no longer assure access to mental health care for children regardless of their parents’ ability to pay.
A once proud community-based mental health care system that was “for one and for all” is being systematically deconstructed into a depleted “Medicaid-only, others need not apply” delivery system.
New York State has a statutory responsibility to make sure that its most vulnerable citizens, our children, get care regardless of their families’ economic status. Instead, what we are getting is institutionalized classism that cuts the middle class and working poor out of the behavioral health equation.
Many children with what seems like ample health insurance coverage will no longer receive behavioral healthcare services from community clinics as a result of the lack of parity between government (Medicaid) rates and rates paid by commercial insurers for behavioral health care. And, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the new Federal Mental Health Parity Act will not help. Offering unlimited clinic visits at substandard rates is not parity, but rather a barrier that denies access to the middle class and working poor. Commercial insurers that cannot demonstrate an adequacy of network for behavioral health care should have their licenses revoked by the State Department of Insurance.
Community clinics have always been a mainstay in addressing the needs of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances and their families. Private psychotherapists and counselors, with rare exception, cannot and afford to offer the labor intensive work necessary to properly serve families that are struggling with serious emotional disturbances.
We call on New York State, in conjunction with local government, to restore and enhance rather than slash local assistance funding – a partnership between local and state government, the local community and client-consumer. Action must to be taken now to reverse the course of clinic reform and to preserve local assistance funding before it is too late.
Thank you, senators, for holding this hearing and for giving me the opportunity to testify before the committee.
Andrew Malekoff is executive director and chief executive officer for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, Roslyn Heights, New York email: amalekoff@northshorechildguidance.org
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