“This fight is about the state impairing and interfering with our duties as professionals…” WE’RE PARTNERS — President Benson announces the formation of the Children’s Mental Health Partnership and details the groups agenda during this news conference in July — Photo by Sherry Halbrook It’s our responsibility at PEF to protect the public good By ROGER E. BENSON We are fighting on many fronts to protect our members and the quality services we provide. The state’s plan to close and consolidate four children’s psychiatric centers provides us with an opportunity to reinforce our dual role of protecting public services while protecting our members, and break away from the stereotype with which we are so often saddled, that of being only self-serving. On the cover of this Communicator is a photograph from our news conference announcing the formation of a coalition of experts and family support groups and a media campaign dedicated to fighting the misguided proposal by the state Office of Mental Health to close and consolidate four children’s psychiatric centers with adult centers. Like other issues such as short staffing and time-keeping, the fight against closure and consolidation of the children’s psychiatric centers is not about job security. It is about our ability as professionals to provide quality services, in this instance, to the state’s most vulnerable children. This fight is about the state impairing and interfering with our duties as professionals to perform our jobs to the best of our ability. It’s about the Office of Mental Health making a decision based, not on what is therapeutically the best treatment environment for the children, but what has become an all-too-familiar theme in state government of what is cheapest and what is most advantageous to big political donors. If the state’s plan for closures and consolidations is allowed to proceed it would implement a policy contrary to the advice of experts in psychiatry child and will reverse 30 years of policy in the state’s treatment of children with mental illness, reducing our ability to provide quality services to the citizens of New York state. To fight this threat, we have built a coalition of more than 25 groups and individuals including family support groups, experts in the field of treatment, professional organizations dedicated to the treatment of children with mental illness, and other unions. We’ve come together because we recognize that our best chance of stopping OMH’s misguided proposal lies in our ability to create broad-based partnerships. Our ability to build partnerships around this and other issues using constituent groups strengthens our hand in dealing with the state and raises the stakes if the state ignores our issues. There is truth to the adage of strength in numbers; if the state administration ignores us, it is at their own peril. The Communicator Home Page