Parents want state to keep Cottonwood's doors open

The state of Missouri's plan to close a Cape Girardeau residential treatment center for children with emotional and behavioral problems has sparked anger and frustration in parents whose children have been helped at the center.

"It isn't right," said Tami Binkard of Cape Girardeau, whose 15-year-old son is currently undergoing treatment at the center. She termed the Missouri Department of Mental Health cost-cutting plan "crazy."

Binkard's son is autistic and has had anger problems for years, assaulting his brothers and a sister. He stands 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 210 pounds.

He stayed at the center and received treatment from March to December 2002. When he returned home, he refused to go to school or take his medications. He broke windows and punched dents in his mother's car.

She admitted him to Cottonwood a second time on June 27. He has been there ever since.

"He is nowhere close to being ready to get out," said Binkard, who doesn't know what she will do if the center closes on June 15.

The Cottonwood Treatment Center at 1025 N. Sprigg is the Department of Mental Health's only residential treatment center devoted exclusively to treating mentally ill children. The 32-bed center is routinely full, and there is a waiting list of parents wanting to admit their troubled children to the center. Medicaid pays the bill for many of the families who otherwise couldn't afford care.

The center, which opened in August 1987, serves children throughout the state.

The state has proposed moving 16 beds to a mental health center at Farmington. But several Cottonwood parents said they don't want their children moved to the Farmington center because it is on the same grounds as a state facility that treats mentally ill adults, including sexual offenders. The distance of the Farmington center from Southeast Missouri also will create a hardship for many of the families.

The mental health department says it will save more than $2 million annually by closing the center and eliminating its 83 jobs. But Binkard said that's short sighted. Without the center, troubled children likely will end up committing crimes that will land them in prison, she said.

"Taxpayers will be paying for it one way or another.

"If they want them to all be juvenile delinquents, close the place now," she said.

Some of the children have no parents or family to take care of them should the center close, Binkard said.

Binkard and other parents said they're unable to deal with their emotionally disturbed children at home.

Cathy Peck of Poplar Bluff, Mo., said Cottonwood gave her son back his life. Now 12, her son was admitted to the center when he was 10 years old after having been in and out of psychiatric wards at five hospitals.

"He had no social skills," she said. "He kept getting kicked out of school." He was suicidal, the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, Peck said.

"It was terrible," she said.

But her son improved to the point that he was discharged after two years of treatment, Peck said.

The center staff provided him with compassionate counseling and good role models, she said.

"They gave him his dignity back. They gave him self-esteem."

If the center closes, other troubled children won't get the help they need, Peck said.

"Without Cottonwood, there are going to be a lot of kids that are throw-away kids," she said. "It is just really sad."

The complex has a main building which houses administrative offices and a gym. Children are housed in four cottages. A fifth is used for classrooms for in-house schooling. Southeast Missouri State University owns the buildings. The state pays over $387,000 annually to lease the buildings.

University president Dr. Ken Dobbins said the university uses much of that money to maintain the Cottonwood buildings and grounds.

Closing the center would eliminate internships for students majoring in fields like psychology and social work, he said.

University officials aren't sure how the buildings will be used if the center closes. One possibility is to turn the buildings into apartments, Dobbins said.

Parents don't want to hear about alternative uses for the buildings.

"It makes me angry," Bonita Nowland of Steelville, Mo., said of the mental health department's plan to close the center. Her 14-year-old daughter has been enrolled at the center for a year.

Nowland said her daughter, who had been molested by a family member when she was younger, used to get into fights at school. She tried to commit suicide.

Nowland said the treatment center has helped her daughter.

Rose Biri of Perryville said her son underwent treatment at the center four years ago when he was a high school freshmen. He was abusing drugs and "beating up the neighborhood" when she checked him into the center.

Biri said her son spent a year in the facility undergoing counseling and treatment with medication. He ended up going back to high school, graduating last June. He now works at a restaurant.

"If Cottonwood hadn't been there, I don't know what I would have done," she said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123