funds are received and new facility opens. Dedication ceremony for the RiverView School takes place on October 8.
1971 Governor Meskill, in downsizing government, eliminates co-coordinator positions. Wiseman is director; letter from entire staff goes to governor and results in funding of new staff position for Children’s Unit.
1972 BLEU, Behavioral Learning Environment Unit, begins and behavior modification is utilized with “autistic” kids; new facility is dedicated; children move to new campus.
1973 Governor Meskill appoints commission to study which department should have responsibility for autism—co-chaired by a representative from Department of Retardation and Department of Children and Youth Services (DCYS). Wiseman represents DCYS.
1975 Senate Bill 1446 transfers all mental health programs to DCYS, including facilities; Children’s Unit becomes Riverview Hospital.
1977 Public Act 77-43, An Act Changing the Name of the Children’s Unit at Connecticut Valley Hospital to Riverview Hospital for Children, determines age limits, allowing parents the right to sign child six and under for treatment, but any child fifteen or older can self-commit. The “v” in Riverview is now uppercase: RiverView; DCYS becomes an official special school district.
1980 Riverview program starts new management structure.
1981 Riverview cottages go coed; Autistic Unit moved to round cottage, renamed Alpha.
1982 Interim management team appointed to restructure Altobello Adolescent Hospital.
1983 Riverview staff develops community services program.
1984–1985 Major renovations completed in cottages.
1986–1987 A facility for adolescents is planned on grounds of Riverview.
1988–1989 Construction begins on adolescent facility.
1989 After twenty years as co-director, then superintendent, Wiseman retires.
1990–1991 Margery Stahl becomes acting superintendent of Riverview and Altobello and is eventually appointed superintendent of combined facilities; decision made to merge adolescent facility with RiverView to become a single facility with full hospital status.
1992 Stahl retires, and Carl Sundell is appointed superintendent; regional directors announce that RiverView will be renamed Riverview Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Hospital, dropping the uppercase “V.”
1993–1997 Children and adolescent facilities are merged; administration changes four times; residential treatment center philosophy becomes that of formal hospital model; Riverview becomes an official hospital upon accreditation under hospital standards; all adolescents are transferred or admitted to Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth.
1997 After successful completion of the merger, Carl Sundell retires and Louis Ando becomes acting superintendent.
1998 Ando becomes full superintendent but given temporary assignment as bureau chief in the central office of Department of Children and Families as an additional responsibility.
1999 Robert Plant, Ph.D., appointed as superintendent when Lou Ando promoted to bureau chief of medical services in central office.
2000–2004 Focus becomes designing ABCD, a new milieu program, and implementing it in all residential units; decreasing length of stay; reducing use of mechanical restraints.
2004 Melodie Peet becomes fifth superintendent as Plant transfers to central office in charge of community system of care development (community collaboratives); this becomes a period of internal strife, poor morale, staff and kids acting out. Central office orders external program review; newspapers reflect concern; and politicians suggest closing Riverview as too costly.
2008 Melodie Peet resigns. Joyce Welch, superintendent of Connecticut Children’s Place, becomes superintendent and begins recovery efforts.
2011 Joyce retires after bringing order back to Riverview; Michelle Sarofin becomes new superintendent.
2012 Riverview retires. A new entity named the Albert J. Solnit Children’s Center with mission to be the center of children’s mental health services opens.
2014 Full description of changing mission is in progress.
[ CHAPTER 2 ]
A PLACE TO START
…
In 1962 children diagnosed with serious psychiatric or behavioral difficulties were admitted to Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown and eventually placed in the Children’s Unit. However, it was many years earlier, in the early 1940s, that legislators, parents, mental health professionals, and scholars from the Yale Child Study Center planted the seeds for reforming children’s mental health facilities in Connecticut.
These innovators identified problems in the mental health system and began talking about the need for a residential setting for children and youth unable to be served in traditional child guidance clinics or residential child-caring facilities. A survey in 1943 by James M. Cunningham of the State Bureau of Mental Hygiene provided enough evidence to support the need for a psychiatric study home. In 1945 Governor Raymond Baldwin appointed a child home study committee that repeated the survey, focusing on the number of new cases referred to the juvenile court, State Child Welfare Division, or Council of Social Agencies in the calendar year 1945. These agencies were asked to identify children under the age of sixteen who met one of the following criteria:
(A) Required more careful observation and diagnosis than could be provided in an existing outpatient clinic if one were available. Or
(B) Required a more extended period of psychiatric treatment, excluding children diagnosed as psychotic and needing long-term care.
There were 636 children so identified, 355 in category A and 281 in Category B.
In their preliminary report to the governor dated 23 December 1946, the Subcommittee on Operations unanimously recommended that “a cottage type of institution [be] required for satisfactory work with the children,” and “the individual cottages should be small, housing no more than twelve children each.” It was agreed that the central treatment building would be planned with facilities for carrying out treatment with one hundred children in residence. The committee recommended the “immediate establishment of a seventy two bed cottage type of institution with an embracive children’s program under psychiatric direction.”1
In 1947 the first positive step in the implementation of this recommendation came in the form of House Bill 441, submitted to the Connecticut General Assembly. It was favorably received by the Committee on Welfare and Humane Institutions, but not by the Appropriations Committee, which had the responsibility of approving the $643,000 needed.
In 1948 the new governor, James McConaughy, former president of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, reactivated the Child Study Committee. The committee submitted its report in December 1948 to Governor Chester Bowles after McConaughy’s
