Veronica Leventhal describes client denied mental health care in detention
Veronica Leventhal of the Center for Family Representation describes a client in secure detention who cannot meet with his therapist due to lack of private space and staff. She says he primarily speaks Spanish but lacks Spanish-speaking instructors, asks for community funding instead of detention, and supports Reso 274.
My name is Veronica Levin.
Thank you.
My name is Veronica Leventhal, and I'm the Deputy Director of Social Work in the Youth Defense Practice at the Center for Family Representation.
It's been a really long day, so I'm going to get straight to the point.
I've worked with kids who have been arrested for almost 10 years, and kids get arrested because of environmental factors, because of systemic poverty and racism, because of difficulties in school, and because of insufficient mental health care.
And those things are only exacerbated and worsened when they are in detention.
So what we are asking for you today is to consider funding programs and services that help kids outside of detention rather than funding detention itself.
I have a client right now who's housed in secure detention and he is sleeping in a hall where it was formerly some other space that's been transformed into bedrooms.
And because there is a lack of private space on that hall, he cannot meet with his therapist there.
And he cannot be brought down to the mental health office because of a lack of staff.
So he just isn't getting sufficient mental health care while there.
He also primarily speaks Spanish, and there are, at this point in time, he says there are no instructors in the school who speak Spanish.
So instead, they give him packets to work on, but sometimes those packets are also in English.
And I understand that that is a DOE issue, but I think it should be mentioned here.
We appreciate the intent behind the bills before the committee today, but we believe that more concrete measures are necessary to meaningfully improve the conditions within detention and reduce youth incarceration.
We believe that a stipend should be offered to families of children returning home from incarceration to ensure to help them, to help kids who need to go to programming and appointments and court dates, to set them up for success and reduce recidivism.
I also want to point out I've heard many people speak on the need for more mitigation specialists in the youth part, and I know people who have applied to that panel who have not heard back for more than six months to be approved.
And the help is out there if we can just eliminate the bureaucratic nonsense.
Ideally, the raise the age law should also be altered so that adolescent offenders can go to non-secure detention instead of secure detention, alleviating some of these space concerns.
We urge the council to pass Resolution 274 in support of the Youth Innovation Fund.
We also urge the council's support in passing both the Youth Justice and Opportunities Act and right to remain silent, and we thank you for the opportunity to be heard here.