Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth: A Culture of Promise

By Richard J. Wiseman

Prior to 1972, visitors to Connecticut state mental hospitals might have noticed a six-year-old chronically depressed girl crouching in the corner of a chaotic cafeteria, or a seven-year-old autistic boy sleeping on a cot next to a seventy-year-old schizophrenic man. Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth tells the story of one of the first milieu based therapeutic hospitals specializing in children's care, located in Middletown, Connecticut. Richard J. Wiseman, its first superintendent, offers his own story and treatment philosophy alongside the voices of the many people who worked tirelessly to free children from an adult mental health facility, and to treat children as children. This important book provides access to decades of experiences, useful tools, and knowledge regarding the treatment of children requiring mental health care. Weaving first-person narrative and interviews with staff, administrators, and patients, Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth testifies to the passion and determination it took to spring children from an adult mental health ward and bring them into a place of their own. A companion ebook comprised of three original staff manuals will also be available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Release date: Oct 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9780819575906

Richard J. Wiseman

Richard J. Wiseman is one of the pioneers of modern mental health treatment for children and was the first in Connecticut to argue that autism was a developmental, not a psychiatric, disorder. His work was an important factor in the State of Connecticut's decision to shift childcare, for children with autism, to the newly named Department of Developmental Disabilities. Wiseman lives in Cromwell, Connecticut.

Book preview

RIVERVIEW HOSPITAL

FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

A DRIFTLESS CONNECTICUT SERIES BOOK

This book is a 2015 selection in the Driftless Connecticut Series, for an outstanding book in any field on a Connecticut topic or written by a Connecticut author.

RIVERVIEW HOSPITAL

FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

A Culture of Promise

.  .  .

RICHARD J. WISEMAN

WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS

Middletown, Connecticut

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown CT 06459

www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

© 2015 Richard J. Wiseman

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeset in Arnhem by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

The Driftless Connecticut Series is funded by the

BEATRICE FOX AUERBACH FOUNDATION FUND

at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative.

The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

The manual excerpts in this book are provided for historical reference and are not recommended or endorsed by Connecticut’s Department for Children and Families.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wiseman, Richard

Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth : a culture of promise / Richard J. Wiseman.

pages cm.—(A driftless Connecticut series book)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8195-7589-0 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8195-7590-6 (ebook)

1. Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth (Middletown, Conn.) 2. Mentally ill children—Care—Connecticut—Middletown. 3. Child psychotherapy—Residential treatment—Connecticut—Middletown. I. Title.

RJ504.5.W56 2015

618.92′89140097466—dc23    2015011319

5 4 3 2 1

Cover illustration: Aerial Photograph of Riverview Hospital, circa 1995. Courtesy of Richard Ribisl

To my wife, Eunice G. Wiseman, our son, Kenneth R. Wiseman, and our daughter, Lauren W. Sullivan, who sat through many family meals while I monopolized the conversation talking about the latest growing pains of the new Children’s Unit

RiverView—The Years

Jacqueline Reardon, 1984

A time for us, for them

Those countless faces

The hurt they feel, we feel

Their tears awash with our own

The joys of discovery

They awaken

To light

To life

To self

And we rejoice with them

For we, too, are awakened

To all that is theirs …

And ours

CONTENTS

…

Foreword by Louis Ando  xiii

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments  xvii

1. On the Way Up the Hill  1

2. A Place to Start  8

3. A New Home  22

4. A New Direction  34

5. Children Do Not Belong in Psychiatric Hospitals!  45

6. A New Name  59

7. The Evolution of a Milieu  64

8. Children’s School  82

9. Recreation in the Children’s Unit  92

10. Adolescence  98

11. Teamwork  106

12. Identity  117

13. Post-Merger  135

14. A Broader View of Change  186

15. Addressing the Mood in the Milieu  194

16. The Next Generation  205

APPENDIXES

1. Excerpts from The Behavioral Learning Environment Unit: BLEU—A Handbook and Training Manual Prepared for the Staff at Connecticut Valley Hospital Children’s Unit  211

2. Excerpts from ABCD Program—Staff Manual  219

3. Excerpts from Sunburst Program Manual  235

Notes  245

Bibliography  253

Index  259

Illustrations follow pages 58 and 134

FOREWORD

…

Historically, state-operated mental health systems are not noted for innovation. Funding limitations, staffing issues, political realities, and the slow speed at which public systems often operate mitigate against cutting-edge treatment approaches no matter the good intentions of those in charge. Images of public mental hospitals pervade the movies and literature, promoting visions of large brick and stone buildings with barred windows and locked doors. Patients are imagined to shuffle about wearing faded, institutional pajamas. Rooms look bleak, beds uncomfortable, and personal items absent. Sadly, this portrayal isn’t far from the mark. And our children were once a part of this system. Even after mental health reform began, children were treated like adults. Eventually, however, came the recognition that children are not small grown-ups. Children need to be treated differently.

For numerous reasons, Connecticut lagged behind much of the nation in this movement. This book tells the story of Connecticut’s initiative to develop a state-operated children’s hospital that treats children as children, adjusting to developmental, learning, and experiential differences. It’s a story told from the perspective of those who were intimately involved by the individual who was at the center of our work. It’s a story of how this vision drew in others of like mind and put together a work family that revolutionized children’s mental health care in the public sector.

Richard Doc Wiseman imbued his work with the notion that the children who needed mental health services should be treated most basically as children. Along with individual, group, and family therapy, the program at Riverview Hospital encouraged play and recreation. Children wore their own clothes, and it was not uncommon for staff members to purchase clothes that were a little more trendy so that a child could better fit in. Kids were encouraged to decorate their rooms and participate in community activities. This is not such a big deal now, but it was quite remarkable in 1974.

Certainly Doc was supported by the academic environment at Yale, the state legislature, and numerous mental health and children advocates. Even with this support, however, children’s mental health reform in Connecticut occurred only because people with courage and determination pushed hard. Doc Wiseman had the ability to identify people with commitment and to nurture that quality. He always fostered new ideas and gave people the latitude to work on areas of interest or concern. In times of fiscal deficiency, political strife, and organizational inertia, he held their dream together with charisma, determination, force of personality, and hard work. He and others named in this book have improved the lives of thousands of children. I’m privileged to have known and worked with many of them.

At the time of this writing, a spotlight has been turned on the issue of mental health. With the horrific events of December 2012 that claimed twenty-eight lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (including those of the disturbed perpetrator and his mother), attention has turned to mental health services and needs. A task force was established, co-chaired by a psychiatrist and a physician, to examine and make recommendations regarding access to mental health services for youth. In addition, legislation has been passed requiring that the Department of Children and Families develop a plan to create an integrated mental health service delivery system involving six state agencies.

As a start, these efforts are laudable. However, caution is necessary. To not repeat the mistakes of the past, it is important to be reminded that children are not small adults. As this book documents, children’s services must be developed and provided in a different way than adult services. Since adult mental health issues tend to be discussed more frequently in the media, any crisis and/or threat to public safety could result in children’s services losing resources.

Finally, there is a natural tendency for policy makers to move on to the next problem of the day. It is up to us to hold the focus. By writing this book, Doc Wiseman helps us keep one eye on the successes and failures of children’s services in Connecticut’s mental health system as we move forward. It is incumbent on those of us in the mental health field now and those who choose to serve in the future to keep the needs and concerns of children always in the forefront.

Louis Ando

Middletown, Connecticut, 2014

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

…

Children’s mental health is an intrinsic part of their overall health and well-being. At least one in ten children—as many as 6 million youth—experiences a mental illness that severely disrupts his or her daily functioning at home, in school, or in the community. Numerous barriers prevent children and their families from obtaining needed services, including stigma, shortages of mental health professionals, insufficient coverage of mental health services in public and private health insurance programs, inadequately trained clinicians, and complex and fragmented service delivery systems.

This book is an institutional history of a progressive psychiatric hospital for children and youth, one of the first of its kind. My own experiences as superintendent and clinician at the hospital form the spine of the story, and the voices and experiences of many staff members and administrators round out the picture. You will note that very few former patients appear in the book. This is because the stigma of hospitalization is still very real.

I hope you will find within these pages a story of hope and courage. The institutional history of Riverview is a personal history. It is about the people who made it happen. Over the years, hundreds of individuals—psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, childcare workers, groundskeepers, administrators, teachers, recreation/rehabilitation workers, housekeepers, nutritionists, business managers, personnel workers, clerical staff, medical records technicians—played special roles in making Riverview what it was and is today. Throughout this book, I mention many names as a way to preserve some of this history. In addition, I enjoyed spending time with and learning so much from each of the many people I interviewed and who contributed to the writing of this book. Weaving our stories together, I hope to present an account that is not only interesting, but also a useful record of what was and, for good or for bad, what could be. I have also included samples of key documents and tools, so that those interested in helping children with mental health issues can easily access and adapt these materials. Throughout the text, you’ll see many endnotes. Some document interview data, but many expand and add anecdotes to the narrative.

My most heartfelt thank you goes to the staff and volunteers who worked so selflessly to make Riverview the model of effective mental health services for children that it was for so many years. While the cover of this book designates me as the author, the fact is that I have relied extensively on the words and experiences of many others. This is particularly true of Louis Ando, my friend and colleague who assisted me in many ways throughout the writing of this history. During the past year, as I began to lose steam, it was Lou’s enthusiasm and encouragement that motivated me to finish the task. He started out simply by editing some of the earlier chapters, but as he became more and more involved in the project he contributed his segment of Riverview’s history, significantly broadening the story. He restructured the format, fact-checked, and added some of the finishing touches.

I’d like to express my appreciation to the following individuals from Riverview who contributed information or were interviewed for this project. Most interviews took place in my colleagues’ offices at Riverview between the years 2000 and 2010. All those quoted in this book responded voluntarily and acknowledged that they would likely be quoted (some of the interviews have been very lightly edited for readability). The job titles listed after their names are those reported by the Human Resources Department of the Department of Children and Families (DCF) at the time this book was written. As is always the case when individual contributions are listed, I fear that some persons may have been inadvertently left out. To those I missed, I offer my sincere apologies, and gratitude.

Linda Adams, teacher

Randy Adams, school principal

Craig Allen, psychiatrist

Henry Alton Allen, Jr., psychiatrist

Thomas Allen, pupil services specialist

Debra Anderson, assistant superintendent

Louis Ando, child and family bureau chief

Mehaden Arafeh, Connecticut Valley Hospital superintendent

Robin Arnsten, psychiatric social worker associate

Muhammad Waqar Azeem, medical director

Bernard Barile, clinical psychologist

Anthony Bartell, children’s services worker

Michael Bartolotta, plant facility engineer

Nachi Bhatt, teacher and pupil services specialist

Peter Briggs, supervising clinician

Peter Brown, superintendent of the State Receiving Home

Randolph Burnham, psychologist, Behavioral Learning Environment Unit (BLEU)

Linda Cahill, head nurse

Linda Carabetta, director of nursing

Andrew Cass, assistant superintendent

Joseph Cautella, behavioral specialist consultant

Oliver Clark, director of nursing

Daniel Clifford, children’s services worker

Pat Colanghi, nurse manager

Robert Delvecchio, teacher

Elizabeth Donlon, teacher

Kevin Dowling, nurse supervisor

Kathy Duffendack, supervising dietitian

Marvin Farbman, children’s services worker

Bette Flynn, teacher

David Frieze, director of institutional services

Willie Fuqua, teacher

Herbert Gewirtz, director of Children’s Unit (1963–1965)

Lewis Goldberg, supervising psychologist

Elizabeth Grady, rehabilitation therapy supervisor

Mark Harrington, fiscal administrative assistant

Robert Haxton, administrative services officer

Jeffrey Hewett, assistant superintendent

Steven Hodge, pupil services specialist

Irving Jennings, psychiatrist

Lynn Johnson, lead children’s services worker

Joyce Jones, Children Services Unit supervisor

Krista Judson, lead children’s services worker

Adam Kaczmarek, lead children’s services worker

Mark Kaplan, supervising psychologist

Janice Karpinski, purchasing services officer

Jane Klemba, head nurse

Karen Kovall, teacher

Jeffrey Landau, psychiatrist

Charles Leonard, superintendent of High Meadows

Michael Lustick, psychiatrist, medical director of Altobello Adolescent Hospital

John Lynch, clinical social worker supervisor

Chris Malinowski, advanced nurse practitioner

Judith Raczkowski McCain, director of residential care

Peter Marshall, co-director of Children’s Unit (1969–1971)

Frederick Miller, Children Services Unit supervisor

Anthony Nalewajek, Children Services Unit specialist

Joan Narad, psychiatrist

Sarah Newkirk, assistant principal

Laurie Nichols, volunteer

Donna Nolan, teacher

Gary Nolan, teacher

Judith Normandin, superintendent of Altobello Adolescent Hospital

Jacqueline O’Brien, clinical education specialist

Keith O’Leary, supervising nurse

Geraldine Pearson, nurse specialist

Marcia Pease-Grant, psychiatric social worker supervisor

Melodie Peet, superintendent of Riverview

Sangeeta Peschuri, psychiatrist

Sandra Pizzo, children’s services worker

Robert Plant, division director of Community Mental Health Services

Thomas Prue, rehabilitation therapy supervisor

Richard Pugliesi, psychiatrist

Susan Reale, psychiatric social worker

Jacqueline Reardon, executive secretary

Jay Resnick, teacher

Charles Rich, psychiatrist

Mark Root, director of nursing

Thomas Royce, children’s services worker

Francis Rusczek, psychiatric social worker associate

Ellen Ryder, psychiatric social worker director

Michelle Sarofin, superintendent

Marianne Sculley, secretary

Edward Shukis, teacher

Lesley Siegel, medical director

Robert Sinkewicz, psychiatric social worker

Andrea Spaulding, lead children’s services worker

Margery Stahl, superintendent of Altobello Adolescent Hospital and Riverview

Margaret Stewart, assistant superintendent

Leonard Suchotliff, superintendent of Housatonic Adolescent Hospital

Carl Sundell, superintendent of Riverview

Wilson Tirado, supervising nurse

Anthony Ventrelli, teacher

Joyce Welch, superintendent of Connecticut Children’s Place and Riverview

David Wells, rehabilitation therapy assistant

Frank Winiski, children’s services worker

Eunice Wiseman, teacher

Many thanks to Lisa Dierker, professor of psychology at Wesleyan University, who awarded tutorial credit for the work of three students: Leah Wiley, John Friedberg, and Michelle Wellington. They combed through annual reports, transcribed taped interviews, and gathered information. They also helped edit some early chapters.

Also, special thanks to two amazing women who were with me during my twenty years at Riverview: Margery Stahl and Jacqueline Reardon. One organizational consultant described Marge as the mom of our mom and pop organization. With her nursing background Marge leaned heavily on a medical model, while I moved toward a residential treatment approach. Nevertheless, Marge was totally loyal and committed to the task of providing the best possible care for the children. She was responsible for and mentored the largest number of staff members.

Jacqueline Reardon was our executive secretary. Jackie once replied, I’m just a country girl, when a Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals surveyor asked her pointed questions. Truth be told, Jackie knew everything and everyone and generally kept me informed of the mood and atmosphere of the day. Smiling and pleasant, she also had a great sense of humor. When I embarked on walks around the facility I’d say, I’m going to MBWA (manage by walking around); Jackie added another A—aimlessly.

Special thanks to Frank Winiski for taking most of the recent pictures (2004–2010) in this book. Others whose particular area of expertise was shared when needed include: Victoria Brothers, personnel specialist for DCF, who verified the spelling of all staff members listed earlier; Gloria Gdovin, for her many hours of speedily typing chapters of the manuscript, saving me triple the time; Kandace Yuen, medical librarian at Connecticut Valley Hospital, for searching the archives for dates and pictures of older buildings as well as giving me access to historical material at CVH.

Thanks, too, to Matthew Kabel, who saved both me and my computer from an early demise.

Last, but hardly least, I am indebted to my editor, Victoria Stahl, whose patience, persistence, and professionalism guided me through the highest standards. What started out as a simple memoir for my grandchildren and perhaps for some close friends and colleagues has transformed into a historical document. Thank you, Victoria.

I’d like to add my very deep appreciation for the children who passed through Riverview. Their shining presence made me feel that I had the best job in Connecticut.

Rocky Hill, Connecticut, 2014

RIVERVIEW HOSPITAL

FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH

[ CHAPTER 1 ]

ON THE WAY UP THE HILL

…

I did not set out to write a whole book about Riverview. Originally, my intention was to write a history of the children’s mental health system in Connecticut based on my sixty years as part of that system. Having witnessed a very slow evolution that still is a long way from meeting the mental health needs of children and their families, I had titled it On the Way Up the Hill. The story of Riverview was contained in one chapter.

As I thought about the chapter on Riverview and my twenty years as co-director and then superintendent there, I became acutely aware of how my previous experiences in the mental health system had forged a philosophy regarding the treatment of seriously emotionally disturbed children and the function of a state hospital in the continuum of care that guided me in my vision of what Riverview should be. As I explored these paths, the chapter on Riverview turned into a book. Here you will find the story of how Riverview came to be and what it represented for children’s mental health treatment.

Let me start with a brief account of the experiences that led me to Riverview, as well as a chronology of the hospital. When I graduated from high school in 1946, I attended Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. After my freshman year, I transferred to Springfield College, Springfield, Massachusetts, majoring in group work and community organization, and was invited to join the football team. By my senior year, I realized I was eligible for another year of football, so I returned and received a graduate assistantship in guidance and personnel. There I was involved in teaching an introductory psychology course called A Student Structured Class, which merged the work of three contemporary psychologists: Carl Rogers’s client-centered therapy approach, Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation and self-actualization, and Milton Rokeach’s organization of belief systems. This formed the basis of my master’s research in 1952.

In addition, I was asked to teach an orientation class for incoming freshmen. This happened to be the first year that women were admitted to the college. In my class there was a student named Eunice Ganung, and I stumbled over her name when calling the role. She came up to me to correct the pronunciation, and we became interested in each other. She became the first coed to graduate, finishing in three years, while I completed my air force commitment. When I returned we married, and within two weeks I took a job at Children’s Village, in Hartford Connecticut. I accepted a group work supervisor position, and my duties included supervising and directing a wide range of activities utilizing volunteers from the community. After a few years, my wife and I were asked to fill in as house parents in the cottage for older boys (twelve to fourteen years old). We became parents for a year, with twelve kids along with our own two-year-old—our boys.

One of these boys, Jimmy, was always in trouble—except in our house. He adored my wife, Eunice, and would announce to the other boys at bedtime, I don’t want anyone to be noisy and wake up Kenny, our son. Ours was the quietest bedtime in the village. Nevertheless, because Jimmy was always getting into (playful) trouble and annoying other staff members, a meeting was called for the purpose of discharging him. I spoke up for Jimmy, saying that he always admitted to what he had done and never blamed anyone else. I liked him. We all agreed to give him another chance. He stayed as long as possible. When he aged out, he went to a facility in Litchfield. There, he contracted appendicitis. Since he had nowhere to go to recuperate, Eunice’s parents, who had a cottage at a nearby lake, took him in. He officially became a member of our family.

Later, Jim became a successful businessman, owning his own contracting company. He married and has four children. On special occasions, Eunice and I are invited to sit at his family table. When we decided to move to a retirement facility, it was Jim, with his company van, who helped us move.

My Children’s Village experience left me with a true sense of the importance of the other twenty-two or twenty-three hours in these kids’ lives and the feeling that the fostering of children around the clock is at least as important as their one- or two-hour therapy sessions. I made the decision to invest in further training, and we left for Michigan State University, where I would pursue a doctorate in child psychology. There I had the fantastic experience of working for three years in play therapy with an autistic child and also learned the importance of individual work. But I still wanted to work with children in groups, and I was the first student in our campus psychology clinic to run a play therapy group, with four children. Also during this period our daughter, Lauren, was born, and we became foster parents to a fifteen-year-old girl who had run away from a treatment center in Texas. Sue lived with us for two years, and we thought of her as a borrowed sister for our son and daughter. Sue’s two children and their children continue to be part of our extended family.

When I returned to Connecticut, Ph.D. in hand, my first job was with the Connecticut Valley Hospital (CVH) Department of Psychology. That was in 1962, the very year children from other hospitals were relocated at CVH. Three years later I was asked to be director of the Connecticut Service Corps, a takeoff of the newly formed Peace Corps. During each of the next five years we hired 150 students to fill ten-week sessions. Students came from all over the world to spend time socializing with patients from the back wards of our four state hospitals (including the new Children’s Unit). One group went with my family and me to the woods in Danielson, Connecticut, and with the help of patients from CVH, Norwich Hospital, and Fairfield Hospital we built Camp Quinebaug.¹

Every two weeks a new group of sixty patients from the hospital (adults in early summer, children in late summer) would become campers before returning to their respective hospitals to become patients again. Witnessing this transformation from patient to camper to patient was an amazing and frightening experience, one that left an indelible imprint on my thinking about the nature of hospitalization, or what I coined patientitis. And I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Around a campfire one night, students were bemoaning how the campers resumed their roles as sick people upon boarding the bus for their hospitals. The students concurred that something should be done. Matt Lamstein, a student at Wesleyan University, returned to school and organized a community advisory committee with me as clinical adviser. The university gave them a house, and the group recruited student volunteers as staff. They named the place Gilead House, after a favorite campfire song, the African American spiritual There Is a Balm in Gilead. The house is now a million-dollar operation, called Gilead Community Services, providing aftercare patients in Middletown, Connecticut, with a wide variety of clinical services.²

After five years as director of the Service Corps and director of Camp Quinebaug, I was appointed, along with Peter Marshall, co-director of the newly formed Children’s Unit at Connecticut Valley Hospital. Peter and I realized that while some children need a secure setting, with an intensive, highly structured treatment model, we wanted our program to be as unlike a hospital as possible. Fortunately, our boss, Deputy Commissioner Charles Launi, and Commissioner Wilfred Bloomberg agreed with us. What follows are the stories of how the Riverview Children’s Unit came to be and the amazing challenges that existed for those of us who built a mental health system to serve children.

RIVERVIEW: A TIMELINE

1943–1955  Public awareness grows of plight of children with serious mental health issues, including autistic children, who at that time were considered mental health patients.

1947  House Bill 441 passes, recommending construction of a seventy-two-bed facility.

1957  High Meadows Residential Treatment Facility constructed with far fewer beds than required. Several children sixteen and under are still in Connecticut’s state adult psychiatric hospitals, referred to as insane asylums.

1960  Connecticut Department of Mental Health is formed.

1961–1962  Children sixteen and under are transferred to Connecticut Valley Hospital (CVH) from the three adult psychiatric hospitals. They sleep wherever beds can be found on the adult wards.

1962–1963  Children are brought together to form the Children’s Unit, boys located in Beers Hall, a section of Shew Hall, otherwise occupied by adult patients. The girls occupy an adjacent section of Weeks Hall, built in 1868.

1964  Blue ribbon committee recommends moving the Children’s Unit to a new site on the grounds of CVH.

1965  Children are moved to Merritt Hall, a newer building (built in 1960) primarily for adult women. Three wards on the top floor are allocated to children.

1966  Architect Val Carlson is hired to draw up plans for proposed Children’s Unit school on CVH grounds—on the hill overlooking the Connecticut River—with Silvermine as a central building housing a dining room, a kitchen, conference rooms, and medical records office.

1969  Letter goes to Governor John Dempsey from Children’s Unit staff pleading for recognition of inadequate staffing of Children’s Unit; co-directors Wiseman and Marshall are appointed to new Children’s Unit as an autonomous unit of CVH, with separate budget and control of programing, reporting directly to commissioner’s office; two child psychiatrists from Yale Child Study Center are assigned as consultants; development of milieu therapy concept begins as part of the change from the medical model to a residential treatment model.

1970  Children’s Unit redefines mission as a treatment service instead of a placement/referral service; adolescent program is developed in the state’s three adult hospitals. New facility at Silvermine Complex is official; recreation becomes a department.

1971  Letter goes to Hartford Courant about failure to fund new facility; funds are received and new facility opens. Dedication ceremony for the RiverView School takes place on October 8.

1971  Governor Meskill, in downsizing government, eliminates co-coordinator positions. Wiseman is director; letter from entire staff goes to governor and results in funding of new staff position for Children’s Unit.

1972  BLEU, Behavioral Learning Environment Unit, begins and behavior modification is utilized with autistic kids; new facility is dedicated; children move to new campus.

1973  Governor Meskill appoints commission to study which department should have responsibility for autism—co-chaired by a representative from Department of Retardation and Department of Children and Youth Services (DCYS). Wiseman represents DCYS.

1975  Senate Bill 1446 transfers all mental health programs to DCYS, including facilities; Children’s Unit becomes Riverview Hospital.

1977  Public Act 77-43, An Act Changing the Name of the Children’s Unit at Connecticut Valley Hospital to Riverview Hospital for Children, determines age