Since 2013, New York State’s Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs has been New York’s agency in charge of investigating abuse and neglect in state programs providing services to people with mental health conditions and intellectual and/or developmental disabilities.
The Justice Center recently released a new five-year strategic plan, which has a strong emphasis on the agency’s use of, and transparency with, data.
This week on the Disabilities Beat, BTPM Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins shares some of their recent conversation with Maria Lisi-Murray, the Acting Executive Director of the Justice Center, about the new strategic plan.
TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript may be updated over time to be more accurate.
Hi, I’m Emyle Watkins and this is the Disabilities Beat.
Last week, I had the opportunity to interview Maria Lisi-Murray, the Acting Executive Director of New York State’s Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs.
Since 2013, the Justice Center has been New York’s agency in charge of investigating abuse and neglect in state programs providing services to people with mental health conditions and intellectual and or developmental disabilities.
The Justice Center recently released a new five-year strategic plan, which has a strong emphasis on the agency’s use of, and transparency with, data. We have the entire conversation on our website, but this week I wanted to share three portions of our interview that stood out. These clips have been edited for length and clarity.
Emyle Watkins:
What are some ways the agency's looking to build on transparency and provide more information to the public?
Maria Lisi-Murray:
People want to know what their data looks like. We are working internally to enhance our data, to make sure our data tells a true and accurate story of what's going on. And we are definitely looking at ways to share that data, to make sure that trends are identified, in particular to drive, as I said, a proactive approach to preventing abuse and neglect. So yes, data is a very, very significant part of the Strategic Plan moving forward. And I think that in terms of ensuring transparency, yeah, I mean, we've published our annual report, but we're always looking to make sure that people know how it is that we are serving the New Yorkers that we have a responsibility to protect.
Emyle Watkins:
It's noted in the Strategic [Plan] that the Justice Center “conducted regional listening sessions with agency staff.” I know people were wondering why not have listening sessions with the public, with people served, with families?
Maria Lisi-Murray:
That's a great question. And we have had listening sessions with individuals, different provider groups. One of the things that we looked at specifically was we have an internal unit called the Individual and Family Support Unit or IFSU. And this specific unit has been providing support and advocacy for individuals receiving services, parents, guardians, family members, throughout the course of the 13 years. So, we took a good look at that data to identify what the needs have been, what the concerns and criticisms have been. So, in addition to that resource and our advisory council, as I mentioned before, those were the groups that we felt represented that viewpoint. That being said, this Strategic Plan is an agile document. This is something that we've outlined for the next five years, but it's certainly more of a living, breathing thing, in that we will continue to do outreach and we will continue to listen to the concerns, criticism, the calls for more information, and for transparency.
Emyle Watkins:
One data point that is interesting to me in the Strategic Plan is, the plan says, that the Justice Center has fielded, investigated and closed quote “more than 125,000 abuse and neglect cases and preventing over 1,100 people from working in New York service programs.” I imagine some people look at the gap between those numbers and would say that's kind of large. Are the staff exclusions just one resolution to those abuse and neglect cases? And what is the threshold for someone to be put on the Staff Exclusion List?
Maria Lisi-Murray:
So, when we get an allegation of abuse and neglect and we conduct our investigation, ultimately it gets evaluated and categorized as per our statute. If the subject committed, and is found to have committed, the most egregious types of abuse and neglect, so severe physical abuse with injury, sexual abuse, that would be put into what we call a category one offense. In that circumstance, we are permitted to put that subject on our Staff Exclusion List or our SEL, and that individual can no longer work in the service system where they might have unsupervised protracted contact with individuals in the service system because they're really not somebody you would want to have those sorts of responsibilities.
And we've had over 400 individuals reapply to come into the service system after being put on the SEL. So, it shows us that this is working, that this sort of first line of defense, if you will, is working.
Emyle Watkins:
For more on this story, visit our website at btpm.org. I'm Emyle Watkins. Thanks for listening.
