NYAPRS Note: The advocacy of NYAPRS and MHANYS takes a national stage as Mental Health Weekly reviews NY budget priorities for criminal justice reform and support for veterans.
Criminal Justice Takes Center Stage in New York State Budget
Mental Health Weekly; Vol25 #14, 4/6/2015
The New York state budget from Assembly and Senate lawmakers contains additional funding — nearly four times as
much — to enhance and expand training to help police officers de-escalate situations when responding to incidents involving people with psychiatric disabilities. The legislative budget, which includes funding for Mental Health First Aid training for police, passed March 31.
The budget for FY 2015–2016 includes a total of $1.5 million for Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT) — an increase from $400,000 that was included in last year’s budget with advocacy support by the New York Association for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS) and the Mental Health Association of New York State (MHANYS). The new funding provides mental health training for local police and improved mental health system response to eight localities.
“It’s very rare to get four times what you received in the previous year,” MHANYS CEO Glenn Liebman told MHW. “This speaks volumes [coming from] the legislature and the governor [Andrew Cuomo]. People recognized what an important mod- el CIT has been.”
Liebman added, “On the front end, it will help deter some crises from happening.” The program helps build understanding among law enforcement, peers and families and develops much stronger partnerships with the mental health community to avoid tragedies that have occurred between law enforcement and people with mental illness in the past, he said.
It’s also important to recognize that the budget will include Mental Health First Aid training as part of ancillary training, said Liebman. “Law enforcement will have a greater understanding about mental health literacy and what to do in crisis-related situations,” he said.
“Criminal justice tops NYAPRS’s agenda,” Harvey Rosenthal, NYAPRS executive director, told MHW. “CIT will train police better in de-escalating a situation and get the local mental health system to become more responsive to people in crisis.” The CIT program offers solutions to keep people out of the criminal justice system and avoid targeting people with psychiatric disabilities, added Rosenthal. Instead of arrests, consumers with mental illness may be more likely to receive medicine, housing or counseling, he said. Crisis training for officers represents trends around the country, he said. “The New York strategy is to catch up with other states,” he said.
Re-entry Support
Rosenthal also gave thumbs up to the more than $22 million in the budget to provide pre-discharge supports and planning, care coordination, community-based services and supported housing. The key is re-entry support to provide immediate access to services — all part of the continuum, he said.
The budget includes a proposal to repurpose $15 million of the Office of Mental Health Medicaid eligibility program to grant immediate access to Medicaid-funded medications and services for people with psychiatric and addiction-related conditions who are returning to the community from prisons and jails.
If someone leaving prison or jail doesn’t already have Medicaid and needs that support, “precious time is lost and they risk falling through the cracks,” said Rosenthal. It can take up to 45 days to be approved for Medicaid, he noted.
Rosenthal added, “We tried to get the state to expand the program so that it would put Medicaid cards in the hands of people with a mental illness or an addiction-related condition to get access to services and medication.”
The budget includes $1 million in grants to fund certified applications and assistors to facilitate the enrollment of “at-risk” individuals pending release from prisons and jails. “We see that as a first step,” said Rosenthal.
Veterans Support
Funding to include veterans’ mental health, suicide prevention and prescriber prevails are included in the budget. The latter gives prescribers precedence in determining the medications that their patients want and need, in the areas of anti-depressant, antipsychotic, antiretroviral, seizure and other medications. Liebman said MHANYS is very pleased about the more than $3 million to support veterans’ mental health. The funding expands the PCF Joseph P. Dwyer Veterans Peer Sup- port Program, currently embedded in 11 counties throughout the state.
A major concern for MHANYS is the omission of the Mental Health Public Awareness Tax Check Off initiative in the budget. “We spent a lot of time and effort [pushing for] the mental health tax awareness check-off,” he said. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. We’re dis-
appointed.”
Liebman added, “We have a ten percent tax check-off for charitable care such as breast cancer, Alzheimer’s research and other very good causes. While preparing taxes, New Yorkers should be able to check off for mental health awareness, he said. “We’re going to continue [pushing for this] for the rest of the legislative session and make sure this tax check-off happens,” he said.
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