Trust the Professionals
New York makes good after having allowed some shocking abuse to happen to some of our most vulnerable children ...
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New law aims to protect children at out-of-state centers
BY LAUREN TERRAZZANO
STAFF WRITER
August 4, 2005
One Great Neck girl hanged herself in 2002 from a bunk bed at the dorm of her Pennsylvania treatment center.
Another 15-year-old Suffolk County girl was sexually assaulted by a worker at the St. Anne Institute in Albany, an event so traumatic she hitchhiked home to Long Island
because she was so distraught.
And a Brooklyn teenager, Vito "Billy" Albanese, while in a wheelchair for a traumatic brain injury, was beaten and tied down at a New Hampshire center and received 40 stitches from a fall when he was a resident at a New Jersey brain injury center.
There are 1,400 disabled and emotionally disturbed New York State children in out-of-state treatment centers as far away as Florida and as close as the Berkshires who cannot be helped closer to their homes because there are simply not enough beds in New York.
But because of a law signed late Tuesday by Gov. George Pataki, that could soon change. Pataki said "Billy's Law" would better protect vulnerable children across the state, "from Long Island to Buffalo," and bring many of them home.
He said the law "takes aggressive steps to help people with unique needs by directing state entities to work even more closely to ensure the treatment provided ... is the best it can be."
The law, developed after a year-long task force assembled by Pataki, calls for better scrutiny of out-of-state centers, more frequent inspections by state agencies and an attempt to create more beds in-state for disabled children. Many are placed there by school districts, local social service agencies and Family Court systems.
The bipartisan legislation, considered landmark because New York is believed to be among the first in the nation to enact such a measure, was named after Albanese. But mostly it was born of the years of kitchen-table advocacy by his 67-year-old father, Vito, of Bay Ridge. Billy was neglected, according to state findings, at the Bancroft Neurohealth Center in Haddonfield, N.J., that was recently the subject of a widespread investigation by the New Jersey child advocate's office.
more
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New law aims to protect children at out-of-state centers
BY LAUREN TERRAZZANO
STAFF WRITER
August 4, 2005
One Great Neck girl hanged herself in 2002 from a bunk bed at the dorm of her Pennsylvania treatment center.
Another 15-year-old Suffolk County girl was sexually assaulted by a worker at the St. Anne Institute in Albany, an event so traumatic she hitchhiked home to Long Island
because she was so distraught.
And a Brooklyn teenager, Vito "Billy" Albanese, while in a wheelchair for a traumatic brain injury, was beaten and tied down at a New Hampshire center and received 40 stitches from a fall when he was a resident at a New Jersey brain injury center.
There are 1,400 disabled and emotionally disturbed New York State children in out-of-state treatment centers as far away as Florida and as close as the Berkshires who cannot be helped closer to their homes because there are simply not enough beds in New York.
But because of a law signed late Tuesday by Gov. George Pataki, that could soon change. Pataki said "Billy's Law" would better protect vulnerable children across the state, "from Long Island to Buffalo," and bring many of them home.
He said the law "takes aggressive steps to help people with unique needs by directing state entities to work even more closely to ensure the treatment provided ... is the best it can be."
The law, developed after a year-long task force assembled by Pataki, calls for better scrutiny of out-of-state centers, more frequent inspections by state agencies and an attempt to create more beds in-state for disabled children. Many are placed there by school districts, local social service agencies and Family Court systems.
The bipartisan legislation, considered landmark because New York is believed to be among the first in the nation to enact such a measure, was named after Albanese. But mostly it was born of the years of kitchen-table advocacy by his 67-year-old father, Vito, of Bay Ridge. Billy was neglected, according to state findings, at the Bancroft Neurohealth Center in Haddonfield, N.J., that was recently the subject of a widespread investigation by the New Jersey child advocate's office.
more
posted by Christine at Friday, August 05, 2005
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