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Monday, July 16, 2001
By Steve Twedt. Post-Gazette Staff Writer
On a 10-acre rural campus east of Harrisburg, the privately-owned New Morgan Academy hopes to fill a need, fill its beds and make some money.
The Berks County facility, operated by Cornell Abraxas, opened in October, offering something Pennsylvania hasn't had since the state's mental hospital adolescent units closed in 1996 -- long-term, secure care for juvenile offenders with psychiatric problems.
The need was obvious. Even with 214 beds, New Morgan had a waiting list the month it opened.
Its emphasis on mental health treatment makes New Morgan different from other centers. The facility has specialized units for diagnosing mental health problems in boys, a behavioral health unit for boys and another for girls, and a unit for male sex offenders.
"There's no other facility in Pennsylvania that provides this service," said Bill Cammarata, Cornell Company's director of operations for the eastern region. "These are kids who have been in three, four, five, six placements, and they've been thrown out everywhere."
Jane Miller, director of behavioral health services for Cornell, said New Morgan addresses the complexities of rehabilitating teens who are both delinquent and mentally disturbed.
Historically, she said, professionals with a mental health background tended to see traditional juvenile justice approaches as being too punitive; those from juvenile justice, on the other hand, viewed standard mental health therapy as too soft and coddling.
"The reality is, the answer is in between," Miller said. Mental health care for juvenile criminals, she said, "needs to be tough, but it has to be a therapeutic approach. When you have an environment that focuses on that, I believe a child is more likely to comply."
Officials still don't know if New Morgan can absorb all the mentally ill teens who need its combination of security and therapy. Juvenile court judges and others said that they are seeing an increasing number of children who need psychiatric help.
Corby Myers, director of residential services at New Morgan, estimates that 90 percent of the teens coming to New Morgan arrive with prescription drugs, including some who are "on a dozen different medications." One of the program's first priorities is to wean the teens from as many of those pills as it can.
The youths at New Morgan most commonly have been judged delinquent for aggravated assault, but there also are robbers, drug dealers and rapists. New Morgan does not have murderers, nor anyone who is actively psychotic.
Counties contract with Cornell Abraxas to look after children from their areas at New Morgan. For each child accepted, the county will pay New Morgan $260 to $280 a day to house and treat the youth.
In April, Allegheny County had 15 youths at New Morgan, at a total annual cost of $1.45 million a year. "It's a budget buster," said James Rieland, director of court services for juvenile cases.
That's why Cornell has been negotiating with state officials to get accreditation as a secure residential treatment facility, which would make their residents eligible for Medicaid reimbursement. It wouldn't change the total cost, but the infusion of federal and state funds would reduce the amount counties pay to about $75 a day, lowering the annual cost per child from $100,000 to about $27,000.
If the state does not designate New Morgan as a secure residential treatment facility, Miller said, "the county pulls the full freight."
While state and Cornell officials are optimistic that New Morgan eventually will get the designation to provide secure mental health treatment, questions remain. For example, the state doesn't want a treatment facility to lock residents in their rooms at night, as New Morgan does. But unlocking the doors will require more staff and incur more costs.
Even if issues like that can be resolved, a successful New Morgan Academy will still be a large facility, far from any neighborhood setting.
In fact, it will look an awful lot like the very state hospital units that Pennsylvania decided years ago were not the way to treat mentally ill teens.