Rallies For Fair State Budget |
COMMUNICATOR HOMEPAGE
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| Union steps up campaign to
protect services Lawmakers unite, back PEF’s fight to keep Bronx PC open By DEBORAH A. MILES PEF leaders are continuing the fight to keep the doors open at the Bronx and Bronx Children’s Psychiatric Centers and protect the mental health needs of that community. In March, the union hosted a legislative breakfast that drew more than 300 community leaders, legislators and elected officials. They came to send a message to the governor and their colleagues in the Legislature. “The legislative breakfast united our leaders and lawmakers who are committed to this fight,” said PEF Region 10 Coordinator Jennifer Faucher. “The turnout was phenomenal. People traveled in a snow storm because the issue is so important.” Among those in attendance were Peter Rivera, chair of the state Assembly Committee on Mental Health, Assembly Members Carmen Arroyo, Jeffrey Dinowitz and Stephen Kaufman, state Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Congressman Eliot Engel and others. Patients would suffer PEF leaders told lawmakers that shutting the doors at the Bronx PC would hurt those suffering with mental illness, by moving more than 400 psychiatric patients out of the borough and leaving 800 registered outpatients untreated. “The patients would have to be relocated, some as far away as Pilgrim Psychiatric Center on Long Island,” said PEF Division 213 Council Leader James Pollina. “Families without cars wouldn’t be able to get there. Lack of visitors leaves a negative impact for successful treatment and recovery.” The Bronx facilities are tailored to meet the cultural needs of the predominantly Hispanic patients and their families. In the adult center, 86 percent of the patients are classified as a minority, and 92 percent in the children’s hospital. “The Bronx houses the largest number of Spanish-speaking wards in the New York State mental health system. It’s bilingual and offers a campus where they have so much, including little league baseball games,” said Pollina, a social worker assistant 3 who runs the outpatient clinic at the Bronx adult facility. A multi-faceted fight To keep these cultural and community services alive at the Bronx facilities, PEF’s fight back campaign also focuses on the economic impact to the borough if the doors are closed. More than 900 employees would lose their jobs, and would weaken an already financially depressed area. PEF also sent thousands of postcards to lawmakers in a mail campaign underscoring the importance of the community’s mental health needs, and placed ads in Spanish and English in local newspapers. “We’ve been fighting on several fronts,” said Faucher. “We have been very successful in keeping our story and plight alive in the media. We owe a lot of this to Dr. Robert Lowinger, who has reached out into the community and the Board of Visitors to form a coalition of support.” Lowinger is a PEF Executive Board member and psychiatrist at Bronx PC. “There is a coalition working very hard to make sure the Bronx psychiatric centers stay open. It’s a multi-faceted movement – it’s legislative, patient, worker, union, family, community. All those pieces working together for the same cause is going to make a difference,” Faucher said.  PEF Ad
campaign blitz breaks statewide on March 30, 2003Closing Psych Centers and Research Institutes across New York State opens us all up to disaster Bronx News - Bronx Times - Elmira - Middletown - NY Times - Rockland - Staten Island - Syracuse See the TV Commercials - 2 meg. each download (requires Quicktime) NYC - Syracuse - Middletown - Elmira See the TV Commercials - 2 meg. each download (requires Windows Media Player 7) NYC - Syracuse - Middletown - Elmira Hear the Radio Commercials NYC - Syracuse - Middletown - Elmira - (requires some type of media player)    |
