Thursday night, amid the sleet and snow, the all-appointee Milwaukee County Mental Health Board finally heard from the public about the impact of the board’s decisions on consumers, families and county residents.
The board rarely hears from the public and, instead, gets almost all of its information from the people it is supposed to oversee—the Abele administration’s Behavioral Health Division.
At the very end of the official meeting, when one board member talked about hearing the public’s frustration with the system, he urged people to understand that it’s a part-time board with limited powers and that board members are trying to figure out their role in overseeing BHD.
Members of the audience repeatedly asked, “Who runs the system?”
No board members responded.
And that’s the problem.
Do they not know the answer, or are they afraid to admit what the real answer is?
Frustration with Community Services and Input
Among the hot topics were the lack of community services for those who need them, the lack of respect for the Uncas Park neighbors, who were lied to when a county contractor built an enormous group home that houses at least one sex offender who’d been in the county’s care; and the board’s lack of transparency and willingness to engage the community overall.
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Of course, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele didn’t attend to hear from the public, nor did the Mental Health Board’s new chair, Duncan Shrout.
Let that sink in for a minute.
But members of the Abele administration sat among the board members—a very strange practice that occurs at every meeting and highlights just how enmeshed the administration is with the allegedly independent board.
The Mental Health Board only allows testimony at a handful of meetings a year. This year, I think there are two opportunities for the public to speak—Thursday was one of them. And, of course, the location changed the day before the hearing, causing a lot of confusion and adding even more mistrust among the community.
The board intended for the public to only speak about the upcoming 2017 budget but, of course, there’s no proposed budget to look at and audience members had a lot more to say about the board’s decisions.
If you’ve been following along, the Mental Health Board (MHB) was created by the state Legislature after the Abele administration got frustrated with supervisors’ slow pace in downsizing the county’s mental health hospital. Supervisors were concerned that there weren’t enough mental health professionals, peer support and programming within the community to help folks with mental health issues who needed it. Act 203, which created the board in 2014, was spun as allowing the “professionals” to be in charge, not politicians.
But the Abele administration and the new MHB board aggressively downsized the hospital at the same time they’re trying to build up community services.
But the community told the Abele administration and the MHB last night that the other part of the equation—the community services portion—simply isn’t materializing as quickly and robustly as it should.
Consumers, families and advocates talked about the lack of mental health professionals in the community; the lack of services for non-English speakers; the lack of 24-7 services; the increasing numbers of those in jail who have a mental illness; their concerns about privatizing the in-patient hospital services; and their frustration over not having any input in the board’s decisions.
At one point, state Sen. Chris Larson, who’s running against Abele in the April 5 election, said he voted for Act 203 so that the mental health professionals could be in charge of the county’s mental health services. Instead, the board has been bullied by the administration and has taken direction from Health and Human Services Director Hector Colon and Abele. Larson told the board to be bold and to override the county executive, whoever that county executive may be, when the board feels it’s necessary.
“You don’t work for him, he works for you,” Larson said.
Uncas Park Group Home Impact
A running theme throughout the two-hour hearing was the MHB’s lack of community engagement. And there’s no better example of that than the board’s multi-million-dollar contract with Matt Talbot to build a group home on Uncas Avenue on the far South Side to house former long-term psychiatric hospital patients—including sex offenders.
Instead of working with the neighbors to integrate the group home into the area, the administration’s secrecy and lies have done just the opposite. Neighbors are furious about the administration’s repeated lies. Kids and parents are worried. The facility is oversized and causing drainage problems for the next door neighbor. Recently, a resident broke one of the windows, which was covered by plastic initially and now is boarded up. A promised fence hasn’t materialized.
Julie Meyer told the board members about how poorly the huge group home is being run. She held some documents that she’d found blowing around her yard. Turns out they were the medical records of one of the residents, including personal information, such as his medication.
Uncas Park resident Julie Meyer
She also blasted Health and Human Services Director Hector Colon for lying to the residents about the presence of sex offenders in that group home and, frankly, for not giving a crap about the Uncas Avenue neighbors and the 100 kids who live in the neighborhoods.
“One sex offender ultimately did get placed in that facility. This man had raped his 70-year-old caregiver,” Meyer said. “We were told we had no right to know that. HIPAA protects that. Should not HIPAA protect the rights of people living in the Uncas Park facility?”
Meyer then held up the document she’d found in her yard.
“This is a medical record that I found in my yard several days ago while raking leaves,” she said. “It is from one of the residents at the facility. It has his name. It has his date of birth. It has his medicine, his doctor’s name. The people staffing the Matt Talbot facility on Uncas are not protecting the rights of the patients.
“Hector Colon is not protecting the rights of the citizens and he needs to be removed,” Meyer continued. “This board needs to not give another penny to Matt Talbot. Do not approve another contract with Matt Talbot until you fully investigate them.”
Meyer talked about how the neighbors had been lied to throughout the building of the facility and were told that no sex offenders would live there.
“I watched on the news, Hector Colon and then a statement from Chris Abele stating that the Uncas Park neighbors were stigmatizing the mentally ill,” she said. “We are not stigmatizing the mentally ill. We support them getting adequate treatment. But when you place sex offending mentally ill with the mentally ill you are stigmatizing them.”
She wondered if children need to become a protected class so that they can get their full 14th Amendment rights, and talked about the impact of the group home residents’ on the kids’ daily lives. She said her 10-year-old son is constantly reminded of the facility and is troubled by it.
“Our children are suffering because of the choices that this board made,” Meyer said. “The secrecy that was involved and in providing that contract. And the secrecy. And to see Hector Colon get on the news and say ‘We planned this for two years.’ The first we heard about it was when it was done, when it was going in. No residents got input.
“I want to say that I want none of my tax dollars going to Hector Colon. I feel he should be removed as director”—here she said something about Matt Talbot, but the applause was drowning out her testimony—“And Kimberly Kane, who is being paid over $70,000 to be a PR for the board, should not be receiving my tax dollars.”
Meyer’s 14-year-old daughter, Kate, testified that when she toured the group home she looked out of one bedroom window—and could see directly into her own bedroom window.
“When I took a look out the window of the facility I could see the light from my lamp directly where I sleep,” Kate said. “A place where no one should see, especially a registered sex offender.”
She continued, “Hector Colon has been saying that the mentally ill’s rights are protected and that it is their right to be in a residential facility. […] What about my rights as a 14-year-old girl?”
Incredibly, Thomas Lutzow, the board’s vice chair who was running last night’s meeting, said that this was the first that he’d heard about the Matt Talbot contract.
I was stunned.
The board voted on the multi-million-dollar contract just last summer. Matt Talbot’s chief, Karl Rajani, testified about it at one of their meetings.
Of course, the issue of sex offenders was never raised.
Nor was the public allowed to testify about it last summer or at any time since then.
Again, if you’ve been following along, and it appears that Tom Lutzow hasn’t, the board’s then chair, Abele ally Kimberly Walker, had Dennis Hughes arrested for speaking out about the Uncas Avenue sex offender placement during last December’s Mental Health Board meeting. Hughes was trying to say that two patients, set to be released into the community, were telling staff that they intended to reoffend with boys once they were out of the hospital. Hughes also said that two former patients had died in group homes—that number has risen to four, allegedly.
So you would think that Lutzow would know a wee bit about what’s going on.
Or maybe not.
Safety Concerns in the Hospital
Another theme running through the evening was the concern about safety of patients and staff in the hospital. Nurses spoke about the impact of short staffing on the quality of care that they can provide and their own safety. One nurse said she works third shift and oversees a 16-patient unit by herself. Think about that. A nurse said that the hospital is more like an intensive care unit for the mentally ill, because only the seriously ill can get a bed there. There's such a shortage of staff that only 48 of 60 beds for adults are available.
Another issue is that the nurses can’t speak out because the Abele administration and the Mental Health Board forced all BHD staff and contractors to sign gag orders so they can’t offer critiques of the Abele administration or the board’s policies. That’s why the BHD staff wore duct tape over their mouths in a silent protest ahead of the public meeting.
Lastly, and importantly, there’s the issue of the audit. As I reported Wednesday, the county auditor is attempting to do a five-year follow-up of his audit of patient and staff safety at BHD. But it turns out that the Abele administration and BHD managers won’t turn over all of the information the auditor needs. This is unprecedented.
Jamie Lucas, an organizer with the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals—they held the pre-hearing protests in which they wore duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing the gag order they were forced to sign—reminded the board that everyone wants the same thing: a well-run mental health system. But that can’t be done without adequate wages and staffing and honest information about patient and staff safety in the hospital.
“You need to support these people or the whole system crumbles,” Lucas said of the staff. “If your intention is to crumble the system then I suggest you continue to listen to the Abele administration.
“I want to make one thing clear too,” he continued. “The woman who lives by Uncas and found the medical records in her yard—she now has more access to confidential medical records than the county auditor does, whose job it is to ensure the safety and the quality of the administration and the public services.”
What is Abele trying to hide? Why won’t he allow the auditor to look at safety issues at BHD?
So many questions. When will the Mental Health Board provide some answers?
