Continuing Day Treatment 315 South Highland Avenue, Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510

"The staff at Phelps CDT are well trained and skilled at talking to people, but the structure of the program itself is seriously flawed. Where to begin? The availability of psychopharmacological treatment is limited, due to the fact that the program's psychiatrist is tasked with caring for 50 people. The psychiatrist is understandably confused most of the time because he can't possibly care for dozens of patients. CDT's staff budget doesn't allow for a second psychiatrist, even though one is sorely needed. This leads to forgetting clients' medication history. The facilities themselves need improvement. The program is housed in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse. I'd venture to guess that clients' prognoses are improved if they are in a comfortable environment. This is not the case at CDT. It reflects poorly on them; it makes the program look like a slum. Increase your budget to improve facilities. Very basic things are neglected like providing food to clients. According to mental health law, day programs are required to feed clients every day, especially if the treatment day lasts six hours. However, the program's budget doesn't allow it. Lunch is served once or twice a week, with the menu being a tiny silver of ham with stale bread. Clients are basically expected to tough it out and go hungry. Discharge planning is nonexistent. Clients often stay at CDT for decades at a time. Increase your budget to provide Discharge Planning Groups. Then how, you might ask, is the program preparing its clients for life beyond CDT? The answer is, nothing. There is a miniscule Vocational Readiness group, but it's held once a month for a half hour. By contrast, there are weight management groups, held daily for at least an hour. One could suppose that the staff's priorities are misguided; it's surprising that more time and effort is devoted to nutrition than to the much more important challenge of getting a job. Reallocation of time and resources is needed. The overarching theme here is money. I'm not Karl Marx, but let's face it: CDT's program is terrible because the money that could be used to improve facilities and treatment is wasted on the staff members' salaries. This is especially true of the psychiatrist, who of course earns in excess of $100,000 per year. These people, of course, deserve their salaries. They went to graduate school and earned their job titles. However, if the program can't afford to feed its clients, then wouldn't it make sense for the staff to take a pay cut? Would it really be that awful if the psychiatrist earned $50,000 per year, instead of $100,000? What exactly do you need the extra $50,000 for? A second car? Give away your salary to improve your clients' lives and treatments. That would be the decent, humane thing to do. Or reduce your total staff count. The clients wouldn't care. So there you have it: a terrible program housed in an abandoned factory that can't afford to feed its clients or provide life direction. Once again, money is the issue. The lesson here is you get what you pay for: Medicaid treatment is obviously going to be terrible. The financially strapped clients at CDT have no other recourse than their day program; they have nowhere else to go. Therefore, CDT doesn't have to improve -- they can remain awful for as long as they want, and there's nothing that clients can do about it. So please, staff, take a pay cut. You need to feed your clients. You need to provide better facilities and hire an additional psychiatrist. If you're not willing to do that, then you're wasting everyone's time."