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 |  Subject: Dec 14, 2014--Sandy Hook Two Years Later: Where Is The Aid Going?  Tue Jun 28, 2022 1:34 pm | |
| https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-sandy-hook-shooting-two-years-later-20141214-story.htmlSandy Hook Two Years Later: Where Is The Aid Going?By Dave Altimari
Hartford Courant
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Dec 14, 2014 at 9:58 am:quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/BTHVV4LYFRFTBMPSH6N7LIJSMM.jpg) Cecilia Floros, 10, holds a sign reading Love Wins at an event marking the six-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings in Newtown. (Cloe Poisson | cpoisson@courant.com)At a recent meeting of the state's Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, the mother of one of the 20 children killed two years ago said trying to get help has been at best confusing, and at worst impossible, for many families."It is absolutely disheartening after 23 months to hear of an impacted family with unmet needs. That is a tragedy and should not be happening," said Nelba Marquez-Greene, whose daughter, Ana, was killed. "Many of the supports that were advertised I have no idea where to get them or how to get them. In the end our own private insurance company paid for our mental health counseling and continues to do so.""So where is all of the mental health money going?"A Courant review has found that since the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, the federal government has given the town of Newtown and several agencies just more than $17 million in aid that has been used primarily to enhance mental health services and school security.Most of the money has gone into a wide variety of mental health and security needs, many of which are designed to address the broader impact on the community for many years to come. Grants from the U.S. Department of Education totaling $6.4 million have been used to hire teachers, mental-health practitioners, security guards and other personnel for the school system.The town of Newtown and the state received $2.5 million for police overtime costs through one of three Department of Justice grants. Private organizations have received millions for therapy programs, administrative expenses and even a public relations firm.The federal grants are in addition to the $28 million that was raised by more than 77 charities — meaning that $45 million, in total, has flowed into Sandy Hook in the last two years. About half of the charity money has yet to be spent — the state attorney general's office in its final report on the Sandy Hook charities concluded about $15 million had been distributed with the rest earmarked for memorials or future mental health needs in the district.Much of the money from the school grants has gone directly into the new Sandy Hook Elementary Schoolwhich reopened in a vacant school in Monroe. Two assistant principals were hired for $128,000, seven new substitute teachers were hired to assist the teaching staff, security guards were added and more nursing hours were added to handle the crush of visitors to that office. Records show there was nearly a 20 percent increase in student visits to the nurse's office in the month after the school reopened, compared to the month before the shooting.The funding started almost immediately after the Dec. 14 shootings, when Adam Lanza walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders, before shooting himself.Funding is scheduled to continue until at least the middle of 2016.Where Is The Money Going?Through Freedom of Information requests, The Courant has obtained grant applications and interim reports submitted by agencies that have received funding. An analysis of those records shows:•Two agencies that received funding through the DOJ were the local United Way, which initially oversaw the victims' fund, and the Newtown-Sandy Hook Foundation, the group formed to take over the distribution of that fund for the United Way. Records show that the United Way spent almost half of the $131,355 it received from a DOJ grant to hire the lobbying firm of Gaffney, Bennett and Associates to handle public relations. The Sandy Hook Foundation used $122,000 of federal money to hire an executive director.•The DOJ money has funded two separate resiliency groups. The town-operated Newtown Recovery & Resiliency Plan is getting $826,443 through the latest 18-month DOJ grant. Records show more than $618,000 of that is going to hire at least four full-time staffers, including a community outreach liaison with a salary of $110,000, a project manager at about $73,000 and a case manager at about $61,000. The second group, a non-profit called the Resiliency Center of Newtown, is getting $501,000 from the second DOJ grant; of that, $408,000 is for salaries, including $82,000 each to hire an art and music therapist, records show.•One of the education grants paid for more than 40 new school-system positions, including seven guidance counselors, five psychologists and six security guards. Several new positions were created to oversee the grant, including $61,861 to hire a project recovery director and about $32,000 to hire Melissa Brymer, aUCLA professor, to assist the community in applying for and implementing the School Emergency Response to Violence grants.•The other big school-grant expenditure was for outside agencies brought in to assist the students and staff at the Sandy Hook school. For the first year, the Yale Child Study Center and Clifford Beers Clinic provided mental health services within the school. Clifford Beers has now become the sole provider.Overall, about $1.3 million from the three SERVE education grants is earmarked for mental-health providers working in the school. In the first month after the school reopened, those providers assisted more than 1,500 students, records show.Long-Term EffectsA good deal of the spending has been channeled into positions and programs designed to create an infrastructure that will aid in the recovery process for many years, as the effects of the massacre have been widespread in the community."There's been an increase in crisis referrals for mental health assistance, an increase in number of chronic absenteeism and at least initially an increase in visits to the nurse where it was difficult to determine if someone was sick or needed help," Brymer said.Brymer is from the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, based at UCLA. She has assisted officials atVirginia Tech, Red Lake, Minn., and, most recently, Franklin Regional High School in Pennsylvania in seeking SERV grants following mass killings.But she said Sandy Hook is different because of the youth of the surviving students and the amount of long-term care they will need."The district will be needing to think about recovery programs that could go on for 15 to 20 years," Brymer said.Brymer said there are numerous markers that experts look at to see how students are recovering from a trauma as horrific as the Sandy Hook massacre — measuring everything from nurse's visits to absentee levels to requests for special-education services.Brymer said the Sandy Hook school is a work in progress.Even little things have needed to be addressed. For example, when the new school opened in Monroe, officials there soon realized that there were no bathrooms in the kindergarten or first-grade classrooms. Staff had to be assigned to escort the children to the bathroom."They needed extra substitutes or aides just to escort kids to the bathroom," Brymer said.Most of the teachers who were in school on the day of the shootings returned to work. Through the grant, the school has assigned a part-time psychologist to work just with the teachers. Brymer said the teachers' needs are far different than those of the children.Brymer said federal school officials realized the scope of the problem in Newtown, pouring more money there than anywhere she could remember since the education department started giving out the SERV grants in 2001."SERV grants tend to only fund the school where the incident occurred, and the funding stream has been higher than what federal officials have given out before, but that is because they recognized the significant needs in Newtown are greater than what others have experienced," Brymer said.The third SERV grant runs through June 2016. Brymer said at that point the school system will have set up a program that it can sustain itself."These are short-term grants designed to help the town create long-term solutions," Brymer said. "This situation is not going away and we need to make sure we can truly meet the needs of the students."An Overwhelmed SystemOne of the administrators of two of the DOJ grants disputed the idea that victims' families have been left in the dark on how to get services."There was some hesitancy of some of the families to take what they perceived to be charity or a hesitancy to ask for assistance," said Linda Cimino, the executive director of the state Office of Victim Services.Cimino said she has heard some of the criticism leveled by families of the children slain at Sandy Hook. She said public agencies helped families immediately after the massacre through a special fund and have continued to offer support.The first Antiterrorism and Emergency Assistance Program grant from the Department of Justice was for $1.5 million and was used mostly to cover initial costs the town and other local agencies absorbed in the first few months after the shooting, Cimino said.For example, the town got $600,000 to cover Department of Public Works overtime, assist in moving school supplies to Monroe and hire four new security guards, among other thing. The biggest expense for the town initially was nearly $400,000 to improve security at several schools.The United Way received $132,355 from the initial DOJ grant, second only to the town, records show. More than $61,000 of that money was paid to Gaffney, Bennett to handle the agencies public relations for a year.Other funds were used to hire a communications adviser and an accountant.The second DOJ grant for $7.3 million was approved about six months ago and will run through September 2015. A total of 10 agencies received funding from the second grant.One of them was the Newtown-Sandy Hook Foundation, the group formed by the United Way to disburse money from a fund established from private donations. A controversy ensued when the foundation decided to distribute $7.7 million of the more than $12 million raised to the victims' families. The rest has not been distributed.The foundation received a $173,830 grant. The director will be paid $122,000 over an 18-month period, records show. Nearly all of the rest of the funds were used to open a satellite office.Cimino acknowledged that questions were raised about paying the salary, but that in the end it was approved."It could look like a waste of federal money but there is a real philosophy behind it and that's why they allowed it," Cimino said. "If the grant didn't cover the cost of hiring an administrator, that money would have come out of funds that were for the families or for the long-term use by the town."ResiliencyTwo of the organizations that received federal money are focused on long-term community needs.The town has developed the Newtown Recovery & Resiliency Plan, which received $826,443 in grant money, records show. That is separate from the $2.1 million that went to the town itself to cover the costs of the police department hiring 9 new school resource officers and the school board improving security at six schools.Almost all of the grant money for the town's resiliency plan is to hire at least four new full-time staffers, including a community outreach liaison with a salary of $110,000, a project manager at about $73,000 and a case manager at about $61,000.Cimino said all salaries are reviewed as part of the grant application process."The salaries that are being paid to new employees under the grant are competitive with what those positions are paid in the private sector," Cimino said.The separate Resiliency Center of Newtown was formed days after the shooting by Stephanie Cinque, a Newtown resident whose son was a first-grader at a private school at the time of the shooting and knew some of those killed that day. She quit her job as a forensic social worker for the state Office of the Chief Public Defender and opened the center, which initially was funded mostly through corporate sponsors and private donations."We give people options because everybody heals differently from trauma, particularly younger children," Cinque said. "Non-verbal therapies such as art or music are sometimes an excellent outlet for younger children to deal with the trauma. They are so young that for them to explain verbally what they are feeling is sometimes difficult."The group ran a two-week summer camp program called Camp Creativity that was attended by about 100 Newtown children, including some siblings of victims, Cinque said. |
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