• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

State Senate Panel Promises Help: Agencies to Make Recommendations on Care, Housing

Posted on: Friday, 7 April 2006, 03:00 CDT

By Meg Kissinger, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Apr. 7--State Senate committee members promised Thursday to present recommendations to Gov. Jim Doyle and the state Legislature to improve conditions for hundreds of people in Milwaukee County with severe mental illness who are living in dangerous and wretched conditions.

"We are on this," said state Sen. Carol Roessler (R-Oshkosh), chairwoman of the Committee on Health, Children, Families, Aging and Long-term Care.

She ordered representatives of the state Bureau of Quality Assurance and the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division to submit recommendations before the committee takes up the matter again in three months.

"Let us know what we need to do to help you," she said. "No one should be living in these kinds of places."

The hearing the state Senate committee was called in response to a series of articles last month in the Journal Sentinel. The newspaper found that hundreds of people in Milwaukee County with severe mental illness are living in dangerous and sometimes deadly conditions, places with rats, roaches, broken toilets, no heat, broken smoke detectors and structural defects where some landlords serve moldy or stale food.

Mental health care administrators and advocates attending Thursday's four-hour hearing seemed relieved and heartened the committee's willingness to pursue the matter.

"We need help from this body," said Jim Hill, director of the county's Behavioral Health Division. "We need someone to relieve the huge financial burden."

After the meeting, Hill said he was encouraged the tone of the hearing, which seemed to be fixed on solutions, not assigning blame.

"This is a good start," he said.

Earlier, committee members were told that Milwaukee County mental health care workers are in violation of a court decree to not release people from psychiatric care to places that aren't clean and safe.

Multiple system failures

"There are multiple system failures here," said Shirin Cabraal, managing attorney for the Milwaukee office of Disability Rights Wisconsin, an advocacy group that sued the county in 1992 for violating laws that protected people with mental illness.

"The county promised not to do this in the consent decree to settle the suit," Cabraal said. "It didn't happen the way it was supposed to. City building inspectors have dropped the ball. County case managers failed to vigorously protest conditions that they knew were not right. The state Bureau of Quality Assurance has not followed up as it should on complaints of illegal group homes."

Cabraal's testimony drew a heated response from Hill, the Milwaukee administrator.

"We are in compliance with the court decree to the best of our ability," Hill said. "I guarantee you that we are not flaunting that decree."

Milwaukee County provides $6.2 million a year for housing subsidies for people with mental illness, making it the No. 1 source for housing for that group of people.

Still, Hill said, "Despite our substantial fiscal commitment, there is no denying the fact that we don't reach everyone who needs and could benefit from the services we provide. That failure is in part the result of a shortage of resources across the continuum of care, but especially in decent, affordable housing for low-income individuals."

State Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), who called for the hearing, said she sensed a lack of coordination among government agencies in getting people the help that they need.

"This is a fragmented system with gaps in coverage," Darling said. "Too many people are falling through the net. It seems to me that no one body or institution has made this a top priority."

All of the 12 people who testified on Thursday told committee members that Milwaukee County desperately needs more affordable housing, particularly supervised apartments and group homes for people with mental illness who cannot live on their own.

"I have a guy who started his apartment on fire a while ago," said Rich Brzeski, a nurse with the county's Behavioral Health Division for the past 18 years. "I have no idea how I can find him a place to live."

Brzeski said he found one of his clients who had been dead for two days of a perforated bowel, lying on the floor of the man's apartment. The man never should have lived alone, Brzeski said.

Hill told committee members that the "core question in the community debate is: 'Does the mental commitment law adequately balance the public interest in the safety and welfare of the individual with the rights of that individual to be free of government's coercive interference?' This is a controversial question, and there is no unanimity of opinion on its answer. But it needs to be thoughtfully discussed."

A push for more funding

Roessler ordered representatives from the state Bureau of Quality Assurance to look into ways of getting more federal funding and state dollars for housing for people with mental illness whose only income is from disability payments.

"If the Social Security Administration recognizes these illnesses as grounds for disability, why can't they get the support services that they need with remedies like housing waivers?" Roessler asked.

"Use these newspaper articles to appeal to the federal government," she said.

The committee will take up the matter again in July.

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

More News in this Category