(WEST SENECA, NEW YORK) – After years of fighting to stop New York State from merging the Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center (WNYCPC) into the Adult Buffalo Psychiatric Center, its fate seems to be in the passage of the State Budget, which includes bills from both the Assembly and Senate that will keep the WNYCPC in West Seneca.

For the past three consecutive years, a coalition of Labor Unions - including the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) and the Public Employees Federation (PEF), community groups and elected officials from both sides of the aisle - have come together to successfully stave off the New York State Office of Mental Health’s (NYSOMH) plan to close the tranquil and wooded WNYCPC that serves children as young as four years old and merge it into the Adult and urban Buffalo Psychiatric Center, which also houses adult sex offenders on its grounds.

Now, with an April 1st budget deadline quickly approaching, those involved in the Save Our Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center Group have focused their attention on Governor Andrew Cuomo in a concerted attempt to convince him to keep WNYCPC exactly where it is - in West Seneca.

“We have a ‘wide array of support,’” Save Our Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center Group Chair David Chudy, a retired PEF Official, told WNYLaborToday.com this week. “We’re ‘sitting as pretty as we can be right now in both houses,’ but the ‘key is the governor’ - and ‘that’s why we have been asking anyone who agrees with us to call the governor’s office from now until Friday’ (March 31st).”

In an e-mailed message to supporters, Chudy said: “We are in the home stretch!  The NYS Senate and Assembly each have included language in their “one-house” Budget bills that “the Western New York Children's Psychiatric Center shall be maintained as a separate and distinct entity both organizationally and physically, and shall not be collocated or merged with any other facility.”  If this language remains in the budget, WE WIN!  The kids stay!  The WNYCPC remains in West Seneca.  The kids and their families and the entire WNY community wins! But the governor is still resisting, so we need to flood his office with phone calls. PLEASE: take a few minutes and call his office 1-518-474-8390.  The message simply should be: “Governor Cuomo, kids don’t belong with adults.  Please support keeping the Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center in West Seneca. Thank you.”

New York State Republican State Senator Patrick Gallivan initially introduced the bill and Democratic Assemblyman Mickey Kearns introduced a companion bill in each of their houses that would keep WNYCPC “as (a) separate and distinct entity both organizationally and physically within the office and shall not be collocated or merged with any other facility.”

And in what was described as an “unprecedented move” by the Save Our Western New York Children’s Psychiatric Center Group, the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) in the Senate has decided they are releasing their own “one house” bill this year - separate from the Republican Senate Conference.  And in their capital projects bill (S2004-B) they agree with the Executive’s recommendations with one modification: It requires $14 million be earmarked for rehabilitation at WNYCPC. 

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie was contacted personally by CSEA President Danny Donohue, PEF President Wayne Spence, New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento, Chudy tells Your On-Line Labor Newspaper, to underscore Organized Labor’s support for New York State to keep the WNYCPC in West Seneca.

That came on the heels of a major lobbying push earlier this month in Albany, where PEF President Spence (Pictured Below/WNYLaborToday.com File Photo) himself took the day to join with WNYCPC Representatives, who traveled from West Seneca to the State Capitol, to meet with individual Elected State Officials in order to make their case to keep WNYCPC exactly where it is.

“We’re in the ‘stretch run,’” Chudy told WNYLaborToday.com this week.  “If these bills are ‘allowed to stay in (the budget), we win.’  The governor ‘has made it a point to have a budget in place every April first’ and we ‘need to continue to contact him, as well as Assembly Speaker Heastie, State Senator Gallivan, Assemblyman Kearns and everyone else who has supported us.’  This is our ‘last hurdle,’ so ‘we’re pushing and standing firm – and focusing in on the governor.’”

The WNYCPC, which opened in 1970, serves 19 Western New York Counties and has been there over the years for a countless number of emotionally disturbed children between the ages of four and 18.  At last report, the facility had 46 inpatients and a waiting list of 16.

In addition, the WNYCPC received a 99% rating in 2012, as well as special designation in being in the top 10% of all hospitals accredited by the Illinois-Based Joint Commission across the United States, and has the lowest re-hospitalization rates in New York State out of all children and adult facilities.  The Joint Commission is an Independent/Non-Profit Organization that accredits and certifies more than 20,000 health care facilities and programs, mostly hospitals, in the country - both public and private.

Despite this and the fact that the local state delegation was able get the State Legislature to include funding for a third straight year for the WNYCPC in the 2016-2017 budget, keeping it open until the end of March (2017) - NYSOMH still stands firm on its mission to downsize the number of psychiatric centers in the state, which was first unveiled back in July 2013 and when all learned of its plan to move WNYCPC and incorporate it into the adult Buffalo Psychiatric Center, despite continued public and patient backlash that there’s no real need to move the Children’s Center from its sprawling, wooded and tranquil base of care in rural West Seneca into a urban location where adults are also housed.

At last report, PEF represents a little more than 100 Workers at WNYCPC, while the CSEA represents another 80 at the West Seneca Facility.

WNYLaborToday.com Editor’s Note: For More On This Labor News Story, Read Your On-Line Labor Newspaper’s January 19th Labor News Report, Headlined: ‘Standing Up For Those Who Do Not Have A Voice,’ PEF President Wayne Spence Calls For Governor Cuomo To Visit The WNY Children’s Psychiatric Center & Commit To Keeping The Facility Open In West Seneca at http://www.wnylabortoday.com/news/2017/01/19/national-labor-news/standing-up-for-those-who-do-not-have-a-voice-pef-president-wayne-spence-calls-for-governor-cuomo-to-visit-the-wny-children-s-psychiatric-center-commit-to-keeping-the-facility-open-in-west-seneca/