Advocacy E-News March 25, 2015

March 25, 2015

 

NJ ASSEMBLY HOLDS BUDGET HEARINGS

Phillip Lubitz, associate director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness New Jersey, also asked for more funding, saying the state isn’t keeping promise on mental health funding.

The state has been diverting savings from shuttering the Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital that were to be reinvested in community placements and other services into the general fund, and backfilling the community mental health budget with new revenue from the Medicaid expansion, Lubitz said.

“There is a clear message being sent to families that New Jersey’s word is only as good as the next budget.”

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SUPREME COURT CONSIDERS IMPACT OF DISABILITY LAW ON POLICE

The Supreme Court on Monday seemed skeptical that the nation’s disabilities law requires police to take special precautions when arresting armed and violent suspects who are mentally ill. Most justices expressed doubts about second-guessing police who are trying to protect public safety. The justices heard arguments in a dispute over how San Francisco police in 2008 dealt with a woman with schizophrenia who had threatened to kill her social worker. Police ultimately forced their way into Teresa Sheehan’s room at a group home, then shot her after she came at them with a knife.

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LAST-DITCH COURT BATTLE TO STOP GREYSTONE DEMOLITION

With a planned demolition looming in the near future for the old Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Parsippany, a preservation group is mounting a last-ditch effort to save the main Kirkbride Building. With a planned demolition looming in the near future for the old Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Parsippany, a preservation group is mounting a last-ditch effort to save the main Kirkbride Building.

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