New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, is unable to explain where $850 million allocated to the mental health programme she champions has gone, according to reports. The initiative, ThriveNYC, has been running for three years but organisers have largely failed to keep records of its achievements, and available data shows it is falling well behind targets.
Despite this, the programme has been granted an even larger budget and is now on track to spend $1 billion over five years. A Politico report reveals that those running the scheme have largely failed to measure its impact or track spending. ThriveNYC claims to have developed 417 metrics to assess effectiveness, but when asked to evaluate its impact so far, the data was piecemeal and painted a largely failing picture.
For instance, 29 hospitals agreed to screen nearly 78,000 new mothers for postnatal depression each year. However, between 2016 and 2018, only 28,000 patients were screened, and just 570 received help—a fraction of the estimated 12,000 to 15,000 who needed care. Additionally, almost 190,000 Narcan kits were distributed to hospitals in areas with high opioid use, but there is no evidence of how many were used.
Efforts to obtain a line-item budget from ThriveNYC were unsuccessful, and the two budget breakdowns seen showed wildly different numbers: one from City Hall indicated $594 million in spending, while another from the Independent Budget Office showed $816 million. Queens Councilman Robert Holden expressed concern, stating, 'I like the fact that money is going toward mental health, but when they say we're seeing a benefit in all areas, I take exception to that, because I don't see it everywhere.'
The revelations come as Mayor de Blasio announced the mothballing of his failed Renewal school programme, which spent $773 million to improve 100 of New York's worst schools. After three years, only 25 schools improved enough to leave the list, while the same number either closed or merged with other schools.
