By Abigail Kramer
Across New York State, children and adolescents wait weeks—or even months—to get treatment for serious mental health problems. In the coming year, mental health providers and advocates warn that the situation may get worse. Despite an increase in teen suicide attempts, State officials plan to cut payments for several mental health programs that serve young people in their homes and communities.
The programs, which rolled out at the beginning of 2019, were supposed to serve over 200,000 young people on the State’s Medicaid program with mental
health or substance abuse problems. A year after their launch, however,
services are reaching a tiny fraction of the kids who need them.
Urban Matters | Mental Health
Reform or Relapse? Kids’ Medicaid Mental Health Services Hang in the Balance
By Abigail Kramer
After five years of planning and negotiation, the State’s departments of health, mental health, and substance abuse had come up with a plan to overhaul their outdated, overburdened system of mental health services for low-income kids.
Report | Child Welfare, Child Care, Mental Health
Baby & Toddler Takeoff (2015)
By Kendra Hurley, Abigail Kramer and Bruce Cory with Evan Pellegrino and Gail Robinson
With nearly 15 million new dollars earmarked in the 2016 city budget for the social and emotional health of the youngest New Yorkers, the city's growing interest in what's often called "infant mental health" is undeniable. This report offers the first comprehensive look at New York's key new goals and efforts to protect the well-being of babies and toddlers.
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Report | Child Welfare, Homelessness, Poverty, Mental Health
In Need of Shelter: Protecting the city’s youngest children from the traumas of homelessness (2015)
By Kendra Hurley and Abigail Kramer
This Child Welfare Watch report describes the stresses that homelessness puts on families with young children, and explores the discontinuity between the large number of young children in the shelter system and the dearth of services available to them.
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Report & Event | Child Welfare, Child Care, Poverty, Mental Health
Baby Steps: Poverty, chronic stress, and NY’s youngest children (2014)
By Andrew White, Kendra Hurley, and Abigail Kramer
We look at the science of early childhood development—and we illuminate how supportive, nurturing caregivers can buffer children from the negative impacts of early adversity, including the ambient stress that so often accompanies intractable poverty.
Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D., FAMRI professor of child health and development, Harvard School of Public Health. Linda Lausell Bryant, executive director, Inwood House. Susan Chinitz, professor of clinical pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Piazadora Footman, parent; editorial assistant at Rise, a magazine written by and for parents in the child welfare system; and Chances for Children participant Benita Miller, deputy commissioner of family permanency services, NYC Administration for Children's Services. Andrew White, director, Center for New York City Affairs, The New School
Hard Choices: Caring for the children of mentally ill parents (2009)
By Andrew White, Clara Hemphill, Kendra Hurley, Ann Farmer, and Maia Szalavitz
A joint report with the Center for an Urban Future documenting the issues facing poor and working class parents with mental illness and their children.