Proponents of New York City advocate for alternatives to the mental health crisis

Queens mother LaTasha Wilson was used to receiving calls from her daughter’s elementary school warning her of concerns about her behavior - but she was not ready for the one that came on February 15.

Wilson’s six-year-old daughter Violet, who has autism and ADHD, was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital after the school called an ambulance for a first-grader during a mental health crisis, Wilson recalled staff from the 186th public school.

“I was screaming about the damn murder,” Wilson said.

No one called her at school for 45 minutes when her daughter allegedly cried inconsolably and threatened to injure herself, Wilson claims. She was warned only when her daughter was already in the ambulance, Wilson said.

The distraught mother rushed to the pediatric ambulance at the Jewish Medical Center on Long Island, where she found her daughter riding a bicycle between “sleeping, crying and [being] really scared. ”

The girl was released from the hospital and has since returned to school, but the incident left a lasting mark on both the mother and the child.

A pilot program that hit the city budget next year could have prevented the trauma that Violet and other students experienced from being sent to the hospital during an emotional crisis.

Proponents are pushing for the city to invest more in equipping schools with alternatives to police participation and going to children’s hospitals - and received a big boost last year when the city set aside $ 5 million in a budget to pilot a new initiative called “mental health continuity.”

The program, a partnership between the city’s Department of Education, the public hospital system and the Department of Health, trains teachers to de-escalate, puts school staff in touch with mental health professionals who can talk to them about how to deal with the situation and, as a last resort , sends a team for “mobile children’s crisis” to school, avoiding going to the hospital.

But now, after just one year of piloting programs at 50 schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn, the city is proposing a cut in funding, according to Mayor Adams’ April executive budget.

“We have learned so much that this model is evolving, and it would be a real travesty to pull the rug under schools that rely on it to meet the needs of their students,” said Dawn Iuster, director of the School Justice Project at Children’s Lawyers.

Wilson agrees.

“I think it’s an amazing idea,” she said. “[It’s] something that should happen and that should happen because unfortunately many children love my daughter when they are taken there [to the hospital]they can’t go home. “

The principal of Elementary School 186 did not respond to a request for comment on Wilson’s claims, and a spokeswoman for Mayor Adams declined to comment, citing restrictions on student privacy.

More than 1,600 students were taken to hospital by ambulance for a psychiatric assessment during the emotional crisis between July 2021 and March 30, according to an analysis of NIPD data by Advocates for Children.

Black and Latino children are much more likely than their white and Asian peers to be taken to hospital, accounting for 83 percent of “child in crisis” calls, even though they make up only 66 percent of urban students, the analysis showed.

Although the number of hospital visits this year represents a significant decrease compared to the 2018-2019 school year, the last full year before the pandemic, it is still too high and reflects deep shortcomings in the school system’s approach to dealing with children in crisis, Yuster said.

“Being in the hospital in an emergency psychiatric room … is deeply traumatic and wherever it is not necessary, we should do everything possible to prevent our children from being exposed to it,” she said.

Mayor Adams is negotiating the final budget with the city council.

City Council Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn) did not answer a question about the status of mental health continuity negotiations.

Adams spokeswoman Amaris Cockfield said: “We are reviewing the City Council’s priorities through the budget process. Currently, DOE continues to look for the best ways to respond to emotional crises in schools, including any school that has a social worker, counselor, or school mental health center. ”