Bush admin rejected application to provide mental health svcs to child victims of Katrina

[ProSense]

LSU mental service loses grant

Cutoff contradicts congressional order

Friday, October 12, 2007
By Bill Walsh

WASHINGTON -- Despite a congressional directive to make mental health services for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast a financial priority, the Bush administration has rejected an application by a prominent children's program in New Orleans that now faces cutbacks.

The co-director of the Louisiana State University program, which evaluates and treats children in areas hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, said services will be scaled back "very considerably" without the $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"The children are the most traumatized in the United States," said Howard Osofsky, chairman of the psychiatry department at LSU Health Sciences Center. "If we are going to prevent the scars and give them the best chance to succeed, they really need these services."

<...>

Concerned about the need, Congress in the $605 billion fiscal 2007 spending bill for the health department directed the agency to give "high priority" in awarding grants to programs treating victims of the Gulf Coast hurricanes as well as families and children of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, when the agency issued its call for applications earlier this year, it said priority would be given to the treatment of children from broken homes, refugees, those with life-threatening illnesses or those who had relatives serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. It made no mention of Katrina.

Osofsky learned in late September that his application had been rejected.

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[midnight]

1. Ok I have had enough of this... These are basic services that

wealthy countries like ours should budget for.

[rusty quoin]

2. Expected and disgusting.

[Double T]

3. There isn't enough scorn in the Universe to describe my disdain for bushco.

[ThomCat]

4. WTF!

:wtf:

Can those assholes be any more blatant is leaving people to suffer in N.O.? Is there any service they've actually provided for real people who need it?
:grr:

[Karenina]

5. . .

[BlueIris]

6. Disgusting. And seriously—JUST HOW MANY MORE WAYS CAN THEY STOMP ON N.O.???

GOD. Terrible.

[malaise]

7. I'm profoundly anti-capital punishment but

the title of that old spaghetti Western keep reverberating in my head: Hang em Hi!

[ProSense]

8. Kick! n/t

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. He would

[ProSense]

10. Kick! n/t