NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed 2023 budget is looking to cut funding for a pilot program designed to provide an alternative to police intervention and hospitalization for children undergoing mental health crises.
Studies have repeatedly found police intervention and hospitalization for young children is traumatic and disproportionately targets Black kids.
The pilot program, dubbed Mental Health Continuum, was implemented in 2021 at 50 schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn for $5 million — about 0.005% of the city’s almost $100 billion 2021 budget and 0.05% of the almost $10 billion 2021 NYPD budget.
Adams is currently negotiating the 2023 budget with City Council.
MHC is a partnership between the Department of Education, New York City Health and Hospitals, the Department of Health.
It trains teachers in de-escalation tactics and gives them access to mental health professionals who can talk them through a crisis as it unfolds.
As a last resort, the program also maintains a “mobile child crisis team” to intervene in place of police. Oftentimes the team can treat the child at school, avoiding costly and traumatic hospitalization.
More than 1,600 students were hospitalized during a mental health crisis between July 2021 and March 30, according to Advocates for Children — an education policy advocacy group.
That number was as high as 3,500 in the 2017-2018 school year, before the pandemic interrupted in-person learning.
Black and Latino kids account for 83% of “child in crisis” calls even though they only make up 66% of city students.
Between July 2018 and March 2020 AFC found Black students, and especially Black boys, were disproportionately targeted for emotional crisis intervention by police.
More than one in three students handcuffed while in emotional crisis was a Black boy. Black girls were handcuffed at twice the rate of white girls.
Over half the children between the ages of 4 and 12 who were targeted for police mental health intervention are Black.
“Students in emotional crisis need emotional support; they don’t need to be criminalized and handcuffed,” said AFC Executive Director Kim Sweet. “As a city, we need to start treating all students as we want our own children to be treated.”
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