SLC sheriff: O’burg psych changes would tax county jail’s capacity
St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center. Photo: Lizette Haenel
The St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center Task Force and other local leaders will be in Albany Tuesday to meet with members of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s staff (although apparently not the governor himself.) They’ll be making a case that the center should maintain its current facilities, rather than losing its inpatient beds in an effort by the state to save money, streamline mental health services, and refocus its efforts onto outpatient care.
David Sommerstein will have more on this in the morning on our air and on the web, but a quick mention today of the comments of St. Lawrence County Sheriff Kevin Wells, who’s also one of the members of the task force. Wells told WWNY-TV that if the center loses its inpatient beds, it could create a serious burden for the St. Lawrence County Jail. Why? Because people who would be treated at St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center in its current form won’t have that option if the center loses those beds, and, he told WWNY earlier this month, many will turn to substance abuse and find themselves in jail.
That’s one of several concerns opponents of the changes have expressed — including long waits and travel times for care (and to visit inpatient family members.) There has also been a great concern about a potential loss of jobs, although the state has said there won’t be (outright) job losses — that employees would be offered positions elsewhere in the state. North Country Senator Patty Ritchie is co-sponsoring a bill that would hold the changes until 2015.
Yet another unfunded mandate by Emperor Andrew’s court.
It will be interesting.
There is no plan on where those people are going to go. There is NO community group offering outpatient care at the level these individuals need. This is a locked facility with heavy security, these are individuals who in general have a very hard time taking care of themselves. Some can for a while but then they devolve. Where will they go? The state is intentionally making them become homeless. They will go to our Emergency rooms and jails and on the streets.
There is no plan because the feckless idiots who run this state never have one. They’ve done this before, with predictably tragic results and it will be the same now. That the patients in this facility need to be there or in a comparable facility is not arguable. Cuomo knows how to hand out the cash for any half-assed scheme that he thinks will get him votes, but for this he doesn’t even show up? No votes in the psych center, I guess.
You are right OL.
New York is so crazy we have all of these social programs and large government social spending compared to other states and then in the end the State often treats people like crap, and we end up with a huge homeless problem in NYC with crappy shelters and bad school systems with high drop out rates.
Its bizarre.
We then make a big mistake in presenting the argument against closure as a “jobs” argument. When we do that we make a big mistake we should be focusing on the souls we are trying to help and take care of, not the government paychecks.
They make the claim that people won’t lose their jobs – that they will be offered similar jobs elsewhere in the state. How do they see that as NOT a set of job losses for the county? There are two systems that are impacted when a job is lost: the family that is dependent upon that job and the local economy. Apparently the families affected by these job re-locations won’t lose out (maybe? Unless living in the North Country was important to them or their spouse has a job locally) but our local economy will surely suffer.