Acronyms used and key figures: KBHC –
1-800-SUICIDE hotline was started in 1998. It initially belonged to a sex line company, but Kristin Brooks Hope Center (KBHC) successfully negotiated its transfer. The hotline received 125 calls from people in crisis in its first day. Reese Butler, the founder of KBHC, invested 400,000 dollars of his personal money, acquired from the sale of his home and the insurance benefits he received from his wife’s death by suicide. The whole concept of a national suicide hotline with a network of crisis centers throughout the country was put to life by the founder of KBHC. At this point most established organizations working in suicide prevention and mental health fields such as SPANUSA and AAS totally recognized necessity of a national suicide hotline network but had no interest in running it or funding it.In addition they had no idea who would fund as at that time the federal government was not spending any money in direct services for suicide prevention. This hotline was the first of the kind and KBHC was building it from scratch. “We take sole credit for doing all the work to make it 1-800-SUICIDE happen”, we did not even know about SAMHSA.
In May 2000 Reese Butler spoke at the Kennedy-Domenici rally for the Eraly Intervention and Treatment Act of 2000, and six weeks later the Congress adopted an amendment, allocating 3 million dollars to “support and evaluate an existing national suicide hotline network”. SAMHSA asked KBHC that American Association of Suicidology (AAS) be the prime (they would receive all the money and make the decisions on approving of budgets) on the grant (sub grantees like us submit annual, monthly budgets to the Prime they review and approve or deny based on OMB rules). KBHC agreed because AAS seemed to be a credible organization in suicide prevention and we would still be a partner with our plan in the final contract.
There were 16 major goals of the grant. One was to network between 200-300 new crisis centers to add to the original 59 we had already networked.
AAS's role was to certify them first.
Next was to build a computer system that would allow calls to be transfered in such a way that the caller would be routed to the most appropriate call taker who had the skills the caller needed to help them. This system that became known as the CRIES would do many other things. It would allow the system to be evaluated (a key part of this grant) provide a risk assessment tool that the experts in our field would design and agree on so that everyone was getting the same evaluation, getting the number published in all the utility directories, publishing a monthly journal about what was going on in our field, spreading the word about our network and services by attending 30+ conferences a year, marketing the number and serivce through major public outreach events like the Take Action Tour and other goals all to support the building of the infrastructure and ability to provide the best service to callers in times of a crisis. For those wanting to read more about these goals and the outcomes go to www.preventsuicide.net
During the first year all went fine and all KBHC’s expenses were reimbursed. Reese Butler was told by Maria Baldi the SAMHSA liason to our grant that as long as their work was related to suicide prevention there were no limitations to what they could spend money on. The only complaint that SAMHSA and AAS had at this time was that network was not growing fast enough, it went from 59 to 141 crisis centers.
The troubles came in the second year of the grant. We believe that at this point for whatever reasons SAMHSA and AAS had combined efforts to put KBHC out of business and relieve it of its primary asset: 1-800-SUICIDE. Here are the facts that we have documented proof for:
1) Lee Judy- former AAS treasurer told the KBHC Board that the intention of AAS was to roll 1-800-SUICIDE into AAS's ownership at the end of the grant
2) Payroll cuts-While having no right or authority to make cuts to KBHC's payroll Berman made cuts of 20-40% in years two and three
3) Not reimbursed expenses-again having no legal authority to ad hoc decide what bills to pay and not to pay Berman denied over $366,000 in expenses
4) AAS didn’t want to us to do our job and develop projects and hotlines- Berman refused to allow KBHC to develop specialty hotlines such as 1-800-PPD-MOMS for moms suffering from post natal depression even though it has been proven that from the Andrea Yates case and many women who have died by suicide as a result of PPD/PPP that peer support is the best hedge against escalating the crisis.
6) After offering AAS a full partnership in our first conference Berman kept all the $120,000+ collected and refused to pay us the $68,000 in expenses for the conference crushing us financially for 2003.
8) After KBHC laid off its disgruntled staff due to the payroll cuts KBHC moved in with the NMHA. Only to find three weeks later that Berman and SAMHSA managed to find reasons to freeze the entire grant putting all of KBHC’s promising programs into jeopardy. One great loss was the CRIES application which was 2 months from launching to the entire crisis center community. We had been beta testing it for over a year and had worked out most of the bugs and we needed only to build the firewalls between the crisis centers so data could be protected.
9) One dirty trick most internet savvy folks can relate to is the SAMHSA directed their contractor SHS to secure the web urls that once had belonged to KBHC and by Registering 1800suicide.org and 1800suicide.net they were able to drive traffic to their new 800-273 TALK line.
When KBHC asked SAMHSA to do what it takes to help with the situation, they got no response. SAMHSA denied their requests to discuss this agenda.
KBHC had to lay off its entire staff. On
Later that year KBHC applied for a new grant with NMHA, the oldest and the biggest mental health organization in the country as a prime, KBHC as a subcontractor. Their partners were 9-1-1, 2-1-1, United Way, Council on Accreditation, the Samaritans USA, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and other well known experts in the crisis center and suicide prevention field. In spite of AAS’ actions during the last two years, by that time KBHC had the most advanced technology for routing calls that cost to create and that the new federally funded hotline still doesn’t have, it received 36,000 calls a month, had the most recognizable number. (The realization of a suicide hotline concept proved to be working and successful. KBHC created an efficient service).
Nevertheless, this very powerful team lost. The grant was awarded to a novice in suicide hotline and suicide prevention community, MHA of NYC (known for helping 9/11 victims, and a small affiliate of the National Mental Health Association). Not only didn’t they have the technology, skills, knowledge, recognizable number or any experience in running a suicide hotline, there’s more to it. SAMHSA has never been directed by the Congress to create the second national suicide hotline. It’s up to you to decide whether the competition was fair, we have very strong reasons to think that it was not). KBHC, in its turn was left with over $366,000 of unreimbersed expenses, denied for no apparent reason and being given no explanation.
After launching this duplicative service, SAMHSA asked KBHC to donate 1-800-SUICIDE. They were anticipating that KBHC would go out of business as KBHC was facing a huge debt by then as well as they had to pay $10,000 each week for the growing number of calls to 1-800-SUICIDE. (By taking 1-800-SUICIDE away from KBHC SAMHSA would obviously eliminate the duplication of services). But KBHC, being supported by National Mental Health Association, didn’t give up (yet from January 2005 until February 2006 KBHC were prohibited by NMHA from fund raising unless KBHC wanted to go it alone. This was understandable as many of KBHC’s prospects were NMHA’s and they did not want two asks going into the same funder as it would have been confusing and both may have lost out. NMHA paid out KBHC’s current expenses, but the outstanding bills remained unpaid. NMHA made every effort to get SAMHSA to pay the outstanding claims to no avail.
By the end of 2004 it was obvious that 1-800-SUICIDE became an established brand and a very valuable asset. KBHC started negotiations with SAMHSA as for how they could lease or rent the number to the federal government, keeping the callers’ personal data private and out of the hands of the government. All KBHC’s attempts to sign a contract, where SAMHSA would be getting the call volume and paying the bills, while KBHC retained the ownership of 1-800-SUICIDE were ignored or rejected. The federal Government had only one suggestion: “Donate 1-800-SUICIDE!”. The feds also started unauthorized correspondence with KBHC’s phone provider, stating, that if it ever happened that KBHC is unable to pay its bills and 1-800-SUICIDE is in danger of being shut off, SAMHSA would pay the bill and take over the responsibility to maintain the line.
When it became obvious that SAMHSA was not willing to make a deal, NMHA’s CEO Mike Faenza announced to SAMHSA leaders that he was left with no choice but to start a national fundraising campaign for KBHC. Soon after he made this announcement he was terminated by the NMHA board. We do not claim there is a connection, just stating the facts. In February 2006, NMHA canceled its agreement to support KBHC effective
But then a plea for support went our on the popular www.postsecret.com web blog. It resulted in over 900 individual donations, totaling over $30,000 and gave KBHC some more time to keep fighting. In June, iFred (www.depression.org) stepped up and donated $15,000. In July, left with no other choice, KBHC started the www.save1800suicide.org campaign. On
On August 25th, 2006, KBHC negotiated a transfer to the SAMHSA that included processing our claim and providing us an oversight role on the management of 800-SUICIDE. By October it was obvious SAMHSA was not going to live up to either of the promised terms of the deal and learning that it was againt the FCC rules for an end user to transfer a toll free number to another end user KBHC's legal team stepped in to try to negotiate a compromise.
The rest of the story will be posted next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment