NYAPRS Note: The support from NYC’s first lady will mean media and public attention to mental health issues in the coming years, but it will also include a budget allocation that seeks to innovate current programming and improve conditions for persons with justice involvement. We are excited for what this new opportunity will mean for how NY as a whole approaches mental healthcare, and how we may become a model for progressive reform.
McCray Announces New City Funding for Mental Health
Capital New York; Dan Goldberg, 5/5/2015
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s executive budget, expected to be released Thursday, will include $54.4 million in new funding for mental health and social service programs.
The announcement was made Tuesday in the Empire State Building by first lady Chirlane McCray, who has pushed for the city to improve its mental health services.
McCray has traveled around the city discussing the pervasiveness of mental health problems, often using her own family’s struggles to highlight the issue.
On Tuesday, she acted as both a concerned mother—her daughter Chiara has admitted to struggling with anxiety, depression and addiction— and as a champion of her husband’s administration, standing in front of Dean Fuleihan, de Blasio’s budget director, to announce “an unprecedented commitment to closing the gaps in our mental health system.”
McCray, who the mayor has repeatedly referred to as his “most important adviser,” said she personally advocated for additional mental health spending in the budget.
“I have sat in on some budget meetings, but my focus has been primarily the areas that should be targeted,” she said.
Fuleihan added, the “first lady was active in assisting the process.”
McCray’s role inside the administration has been the subject of public curiosity and, occasionally, criticism.
Last November, after a Quinnipiac poll found most New Yorkers do not want her playing a major role, de Blasio said McCray “has only just begun.”
McCray has often been aloof with the press, rarely taking questions or providing interviews, even on topics, such as mental health, that she says are vital to discuss.
In a rare question-and-answer session with reporters on Tuesday, McCray said she has spent the last several months meeting New Yorkers at schools, talking with victims of domestic violence, and advocates for mental health, trying, she says, to learn what works and what does not.
“Funding for all these initiatives came from my travels around the five boroughs and conversations I’ve had with agency heads,” McCray said.
In February, speaking on mental health services, she said the city needs “to rethink the whole thing,” and earlier this year, McCray announced a plan to reimagine how city resources and private funds address the city’s “mental health crisis.”
That plan, according to McCray, will look at disparities between neighborhoods in terms of how services are offered, and measure the economic impact of not addressing mental health issues.
That roadmap, when it was announced, was supposed to come out during the summer, though on Tuesday, McCray said it would come out during the fall.
The money, which is set to be funded annually through the budget, will be used to hire social workers and counselors at agencies across the city, including providing mental health services in all contracted family shelters and the city’s five justice centers, which serve domestic violence victims. In addition to the $54.4 million in this year’s budget, there is a promise of $78.3 million in fiscal year 2017.
The funding will provide direct services, but McCray said her public awareness campaign is also aimed at reducing the stigma associated with mental health.
“I remember a time when we didn’t talk about breast cancer,” McCray said. “Those were words that we’re never spoken and now we’ve got a huge community out there. … We need to do the same thing for mental health.”
The funding includes $11.2 million this year and $13.2 million next year to complete mental health assessments in all 130 community schools. There is $1.7 million this year and $3.7 million next year set aside to provide psychiatric assessments and after-school therapeutic arts programs for children under 21 at Rikers Island, and substance abuse programs for kids between 16- and 21-years old. Nearly $9 million will go toward placing social workers in all family shelters. There is also $800,000 in this year’s budget and $1.4 million in next year’s budget to provide social workers at the city’s 20 largest senior centers. An additional $250,000 will be used to provide healthy relationship training for teens in foster care.
“My god, these are the perfect places,” said Phil Saperia, C.E.O. of the Coalition of Voluntary Mental Health Agencies. “Rikers Island—that’s where people with mental health issues are living these days. Family shelters? I can’t think of a better direction. There’s lots of need for relationship counseling. … We’re astounded that they are putting the money where their mouth is.”