New Jersey Local Fighting to Save Hospital for Troubled Teens

For New Jersey teenagers with severe mental health problems, the Arthur Brisbane Child Treatment Center has been the last and best hope for thousands of young people over the years.

There, members of CWA Local 1040 and other staff—about 200 people in total—work as teams to counsel, treat, teach and inspire kids who haven't gotten better anywhere else.

"We're like the last stop for them," said Bert Raynor, the local's branch president at Brisbane who's been a life skills teacher there for 25 years. "Kids who come to Brisbane have had on average three to seven placements—group homes, residential facilities. We're the last resort, and now the state wants to shut us down."

The center, which was opened near the Jersey shore in 1947, is the only state-run psychiatric facility for juveniles, serving teens 14 to 17. As part of system-wide reforms in the Division of Youth and Family Services, New Jersey's Department of Human Services is planning to close Brisbane at the end of the year and has already cut the number of patients in half, to about 20.

The state is doing so in spite of a 2004 report it commissioned that says children admitted to Brisbane, "are a danger to themselves and others and have exhausted numerous other treatment options."

Local 1040, which has about 100 members at Brisbane, is fighting hard to save the facility—fighting as much for the young patients, their families and their communities as they are for their own careers. They have sent letters and studies on public mental health facilities to every state legislator, the governor and Senator John Corzine, who is running for governor.

Local President Carolyn Wade said she and other local leaders are following up personally with every politician they've contacted, explaining that Brisbane is a safety net for the most troubled of youngsters, providing a controlled environment that helps them heal and protects the public.

"We're interested in what happens to our members but the primary interest is what happens to these children," Wade said. "There is nothing else with the kind of services that Brisbane offers. You can't reproduce it in the communities."

The state is determined to place Brisbane-destined youngsters in privately run residential homes that Local 1040 leaders and other opponents say don't begin to offer the skilled, certified staff and array of services, including a full academic
program, that patients get at Brisbane.

Many such private facilities simply refuse to admit children who are as ill and unstable as those seen at Brisbane. And often children who are released from Brisbane into private care wind up coming back. "The privately run programs don't have the money," Raynor said. "When it comes to mentally ill kids, it's not a money-making proposition."

A report by one of the country's leading experts on public mental health services, commissioned by CWA, says the lack of adequate services for mentally ill youth is a "national disgrace" and suggests the situation in New Jersey will only get worse by closing Brisbane.

"It is unclear what will happen to these children on Jan. 1, 2006," the report by researcher Jeffery Geller stated. "Where will they go? Who will provide their care? How will this care be financed? Closing (Brisbane) now, without a well-thought-out plan to provide for these youths, is unconscionable."

As for the Local 1040 members, who include teachers, social workers, nurses, supervisors and clerical staff, Wade said the state has promised to find them other jobs. But she said there's been no talk of retraining, no assurances about job location and no consideration for the skills and longevity her members bring to Brisbane. Further, the jobs would likely fall under another union's jurisdiction, something Wade believes is retaliation for how vocal her members have been about the closure.

"You've got experienced workers, all of this knowledge about working with troubled youth, and all of this is going to be lost," Wade said.

Wade and Local 1040 Executive Vice President Donald Klein said community members would likely be outraged by the plan - if they knew about it. "One of the problems is that human services is getting away with this because they're doing it in the dark of night," Klein said.

What little media coverage there's been has been quickly quieted by comments from state officials claiming that youngsters would be better served by closing Brisbane and moving them into communities, closer to their families.

CWA leaders and researchers say the state hasn't addressed the cost to taxpayers of schooling children who can't be put in regular classrooms, and fails to acknowledge that many of them come from abusive, broken homes with no family looking out for them at all. Some of the parents who are supportive turned out for a public meeting last December to describe how the facility had helped their children, but the media didn't report on it.

The state also isn't talking about how many children it's already had to send out of state for treatment and refuses to provide Local 1040 leaders with financial data about the costs. Raynor noted that in at least one case the state is even paying for monthly trips to Florida so family members can visit a patient who was moved to a hospital there.

Raynor came to Brisbane straight out of college in 1980, expecting to fill in for a teacher on a year's leave of absence. He never left. Today he runs a vocational program that teaches life and work skills. Students even get paid for doing piecework jobs for community businesses, such as putting together auto repair kits.

There are tough days, but he likes the kids and he's proud of what Brisbane does. "When kids come in here, they're strapped down on a gurney in the back of an ambulance. They're scared. They have no dignity," he said. "When they leave here, we give them a suitcase, and we give them a little self respect."