NY Senator: Child Mental Health Crisis Causing Crisis In Westchester

PLEASANTVILLE, NY — Weighing in on the controversy swirling around mental health services for children and the Pleasantville Cottage School in particular, New York's State Senate Majority Leader asked the state’s top mental health and children’s welfare officials to remove youths with severe psychological conditions from the JCCA’s Westchester campus.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins wrote to the commissioners of the state Office of Children and Family Services and the Office of Mental Health on July 13.

"Increasing numbers of children and teens with significant mental illness are being placed in residential treatment centers (RTC), such as JCCA’s Pleasantville Campus," said Steward-Cousins, whose district includes the commmunity.

She asked that the OCFS help ensure that the practice of sending "this specific population" to the Pleasantville Campus immediately ceases and that OCFS work with JCCA to immediately seek alternate care and placement arrangements for those already there.

The New York City-based child welfare and mental health service provider serves New York’s most vulnerable children. The JCCA’s Westchester Campus was founded in 1912 as the Pleasantville Cottage School, a residential treatment program at 1075 Broadway with the first cottage-style center in the country. Family courts or mental health agencies typically used to send children there who had suffered abuse or neglect.

Now mentally unstable JCCA residents frighten the campus’ neighbors. Last year a psychologically disturbed teen entered a Mount Pleasant resident’s backyard, stole a chicken from a coop and then killed it by biting off its head while walking down the middle of a residential block. In another incident, a shirtless male resident blocked a neighbor’s vehicle on the street and threatened to kill himself.

JCCA officials said they have been struggling to get officials to listen and deal with the problem.

"For over a year, JCCA has been raising the alarm at every level of government about the growing level of needs among young people with complex psychiatric and behavioral diagnoses that cannot be addressed in our campus setting," said Ronald E. Richter, Chief Executive Officer of JCCA.

Last week, Mount Pleasant elected officials and police called for state officials to completely shut down the JCCA Westchester Campus.

SEE: Mt Pleasant Officials Want JCCA Campus Closed Over Dangerous Children

During the first 6 months of 2023, the Mount Pleasant Police Department responded to 459 calls at the campus. In 2022, the Mount Pleasant Police/emergency services responded to over 760 calls there. Based on the first six months, this year’s call volume will exceed 1,000, a record, town officials said.

To date in 2023, the Mount Pleasant Police Department and/or the Pleasantville Volunteer
Ambulance Corps have responded to the campus for reports of:

• 248 missing persons
• 24 assaults
• 23 vandalism incidents
• 13 violent altercations/fights
• 11 suicide or self-harm threats
• countless emotionally disturbed children

"It should be noted that JCCA raised concerns about the increasing number of high acuity youth coming to campus in the Spring of 2022, long before this issue reached the current degree of difficulty," Stewart-Cousins wrote in her letter. "I am troubled that JCCA’s attempt to provide additional services in light of this growing crisis went unanswered despite the apparent pressing and immediate need that they faced.

The state must expedite a response to the increasing numbers of high acuity youth being inappropriately placed in residential centers which are designed for a lower intensity of care than a treatment facility, she said.