By Adam Kramer
In a continued effort to save Queens Children’s Psychiatric Center, state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose) has joined an alliance of mental health groups, lawmakers and parents to halt the proposed plan to move the center onto the Creedmoor campus.
The coalition — brought together by the New York State Public Employees Foundation — wants to prevent the closure or relocation of children’s psychiatric centers throughout the state.
“The minute I heard about the Office of Mental Health’s proposal to move the children from QCPC into the Creedmoor facility, I knew it was a bad idea,” Padavan said. “I have worked to defeat this proposal and was successful in convincing my senate majority colleagues to reject it as part of our budget resolution.”
Creedmoor is located on a large swath of land in Bellerose stretching from Winchester Boulevard to Commonwealth Boulevard along Hillside Avenue. The Queens Children’s Hospital sits across the street from Creedmoor on Commonwealth Boulevard.
The 350-acre Creedmoor property consists of 75 buildings used to house a wide variety of city and state agencies. The state psychiatric hospital is concentrated in Building No. 40, the largest structure on the campus, and uses five other buildings to house a chapel, its administration and a museum.
Queens Children’s Psychiatric Center treats 84 inpatient and 225 outpatient children with mental health problems from around the borough. The hospital’s community-based system of care teaches children how to cope with their family school and community.
In recent years the state has been consolidating its mental health facilities and portioning off sections of the facility as its patient population shrinks. This has put Padavan, who opposes merging hospitals, at odds with Gov. George Pataki, a fellow Republican.
“Creedmoor is a secure facility because it has to be, complete with barbed wire and chain-linked fences and a high-rise structure,” he said. “To pretend that sending children there wouldn’t be traumatic for them is absolutely ludicrous. QCPC is a welcoming campus setting with ballfield and playgrounds.”
He said the children in QCPC already have a lot to deal with and moving them into a “prisonlike atmosphere” will make their situation more difficult, while changing the environment and setting that has allowed the center’s children to thrive.
The move “makes sense and does not involve closure, but co-location,” said Roger Klingman, a spokesman for the Office of Mental Health in Albany. “It will be a distinct entity with its own staff. The same people that are treating the children now.”
Padavan contends the decision to move the hospital was based solely on financial concerns and the amount of money saved from the move will only be nominal. In the long run, Padavan said, the children and their wellbeing should be the first and foremost concern.
He has said QCPC was slated for $17.5 worth of renovations, but the project was nixed in favor of the relocation. He said OMH has proposed an increase in spending due to the $64 million that will be saved because of the relocation around the state.
Klingman said moving the center to Creedmoor would free up $7.7 million a year, which would be used to improve the community mental health programs.
Once the facility is closed, he said, it will be placed on a list for alternate uses and eventually sold by the New York Economic Development Corporation. The EDC sold a section the Creedmoor campus in 2000.
Klingman said the new facility will be a “clinically appropriate space” and the children would not mix with the adult population. He said there are already a half dozen children hospitals in adult facilities and a study found that over the past 10 years found that nothing inappropriate took place between the adult and children patients.
JoAnn Guida, a parent advocate who lives in Queens Village, said the six children’s hospitals in adult facilities throughout the state only house between 10 and 35 children whereas the four hospitals — Western NYCPC, Rockland’s Children’s Psychiatric Center, Sagamore Children’s Psychiatric Center and Queens Children’s Psychiatric Center — OMH wants to co-locate care for from 48 to about 90 children.
She said another aspect of the move to be taken into consideration is the children in the larger facilities have a length of stay almost double of the smaller hospitals.
“They need greater services, such as full time schooling and recreation,” Guida.
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
