New York City first lady Chirlane McCray is defending her mental health initiative ThriveNYC. She was called before the city council budget committee to discuss what the project has achieved.
Some members of the city council say ThriveNYC doesn’t do enough for individuals with serious mental illness, and question whether the initiative is worth its annual $250 million budget.
“There should have been more discussion on how we’re going to gauge this moving forward and hopefully from this point on we will do the better job of that,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. “Because this is an incredible amount of money being spent and the public has the right to ask these kinds of specific types of questions.”
First lady Chirlane McCray says outreach is at an all-time high.
“Just over three years since its launch ThriveNYC has made demonstrable progress towards in its work to overcome stigma, build emotional resilience and wellness, and connect people to care in the places they live, learn, worship and work.”
City Comptroller Scott Stringer is criticizing ThriveNYC for not tracking outcomes across a majority of its programs, but McCray says measuring success is not so easy.
“We’re talking about people here not numbers. It is a challenge to measure the relief of anguish and suffering on a spread sheet. As we have ramped up, we have more indication of how to note the effectiveness of different programs.
Susan Herman, Director of the Office of ThriveNYC tells the city council that performance measurements will be made available within the next couple of months.