Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Scott Walker Has Failed Us

Scott Walker, putting his political and personal aspirations before the taxpayers and before the public good, as failed us, especially when it comes to providing services for the mentally ill.

First, he let mentally ill people living in the community live in squalid conditions where many became ill and some died. He only took action to remedy the problem when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a series of hard-hitting articles putting a light onto this problem.

Other problems have arisen at the mental health complex over the years, including spikes in violent behaviors from patients towards staff and towards other patients.

Four years ago, a patient was allowed to starve to death while a patient at BHD.

This year, it was reported that female patients at the hospital were being sexually assaulted by other patients. It was revealed that John Chianelli, Director of BHD, called it a "trade off" to keep down violence between male patients.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I learned that Scott Walker could have prevented much, if not all, of this three years ago, if he had only approved a secure ward which had been proposed and in the recommended budget.

Today, we learned that the physical structure of the complex is "in shoddy condition" and that due to staff shortages, things like record keeping and notifying guardians have fallen to unacceptable levels.

Touching on some of the problems that Walker will leave us as a legacy, WISDEMS have come out with an ad:



The thing that bothers me the most is the fact that when Ament's pension scandal was exposed, people went ballistic. Now that we are seeing that not only is Walker squandering our tax dollars, but is putting people's very lives and well being in harm's way, the same people are cheering him on. It says a lot about them.

1 comment:

  1. Guess they should fire a bunch of people from this complex. Nothing gets this bad because of one person...

    ReplyDelete