P’ville Eyes Expansion of Special Needs Youth Safety Program

The Village of Pleasantville and the Pleasantville Special Education Parent Teacher Association (SEPTA) are looking for state and county help to expand the popular VIP Program for keeping developmentally disabled youths safe.

The topic was discussed extensively at Safety Summit 2015 held at Pleasantville Village Hall on Oct. 7 that featured local public safety and education experts and elected officials.

Pleasantville School District Director of Educational Services Dr. Carolyn McGuffog, who gave a presentation about students with functional impairments, said the district has developed ways to address the issue students who had wandered off.

“Unlike another child that runs away, who can generally figure out a solution or figure out a way to get themselves safe, these individuals don’t necessarily have a sense of understanding of safety concerns and self-care is lacking,” McGuffog said. “So if they are missing for a while they won’t be able to take care of themselves.”

Such students often lack motor skills to voice their problems to another person or may not realize they are in trouble. About 49 percent of children with autism attempt to run away from a safe environment, McGuffog said. Accidental drowning and accidents are more common for those children, she added.

The VIP Program was started with the help of the village’s police department four years ago. Lt. Eric Grutzner said the village recognized the need for a program. Parents often panic in such situations, making it difficult for them to cooperate with police, he said.

“We recognized that stress makes it difficult for parents to answer questions, to think straight, to remember details and reasonably anticipate locations these children might go,” Grutzner said. “Obviously, when you’re talking about children with developmental disabilities, these issues are all magnified.”

Pleasantville and Mount Pleasant police maintain a listing of all the developmentally disabled children voluntarily registered for the program by their parents. Photos and other information about the child can be used by police to try and locate them.

A sticker is provided that could be placed on a car or a visible place at home to alert emergency responders that a developmentally disabled child is inside. They also offer letters that can be given to neighbors asking them to be on the lookout for a child that may wander.

When searching for developmentally disabled children, police often look to nearby danger areas, such as water bodies and high-traffic locations, Grutzner said. Police can utilize K-9 officers and aerial units with heat cameras if a search is needed. They may also notify all law enforcement agencies in the county using a centralized phone system.

Amber Alerts are not used since they are reserved for abductions and children believed to be in physical danger, Grutzner said.

The forum, organized by village Trustee Colleen Griffin-Wagner, said she wanted to see Pleasantville’s program implemented across Westchester and perhaps eventually across the state using a separate database that could be accessed by all law enforcement agencies. She also said she’d like to create a bracelet program to identify children countywide as well as a crisis team to handle these situations.

“If a kid goes missing in Westchester, like that boy did in Manhattan, it would cost us a million dollars to find them,” Wagner said. “And I think getting the resources for maybe $50,000 for a database would be a lot better than a missing or dead kid.”

Pleasantville Ambulance Corps Chief Krista Kolodzinski said having a list of a child’s special needs, such as the medications they take, was useful for children who are nonverbal. A nonverbal person could incorrectly be viewed as having a head injury, for instance, if responders don’t know their background, Kolodzinski explained.

She also praised the sticker program and hoped the program can expand into Mount Pleasant.

“If we go into a house it may not be for that individual with special needs,” Kolodzinski said. “It works for our safety as well, so we might know if that person is going to be protective of a mother who may be unresponsive on the ground or something like that.”

Assemblyman Tom Abinanti (D-Pleasantville), the father of an autistic teenager, said the program should be expanded because special needs children can wander. He said he hoped the county’s autism task force could help expand the program countywide.

Abinanti said he has had trouble in Albany getting bills passed that required collaboration between different agencies.

“I would get pushback from the sheriffs because they didn’t trust the state police, and it became a real issue,” he said.

He hoped to see a county program created to have a specially trained team to deal with issues that would assist local police. He also said he wanted to see improved communication between local and state police using online databases.

County Legislator Michael Smith (R-Greenburgh) said the VIP Program could be a cost-efficient solution not only for Pleasantville but the entire county.

“When someone is wandering they aren’t going to come to a boundary of the village and stop,” Smith said. “They’re going to go where they want. When you take a program like this, which is simple in its form but so practical, and expand it out to the million-plus people that live in Westchester County, that’s where you have real opportunity.”

State Sen. Terrence Murphy (R-Yorktown) said he worked at the Cottage School in Pleasantville 27 years ago and was responsible for finding kids who had wandered off. He praised Arc of Westchester for its work and said he had hired developmentally disabled youth through Arc for his family’s restaurant in Yorktown Heights.

“I believe in smaller government, but the government that we do bring should be government that takes care of the people that can’t take care of themselves,” Murphy said. “That’s our obligation.”