De Blasio's wife can't account for $850m given to mental health program

Bill de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray cannot explain where $850million given to the mental health program she champions has gone, according to reports.

In the three years it has been running, organizers at ThriveNYC have largely failed to keep records of the initiative's achievements - and data that has been collected shows it lagging well behind targets.

Despite that, the program has been granted an even bigger budget going forward and is now on track to spend $1billion over five years.

The data comes from a Politico report that shows those running the scheme have largely failed to measure its impact or keep track of spending.

Thrive said it has developed a list of 417 metrics to measure how effective the program is moving forward, but asked to assess its impact so far, Politico said the data was piecemeal and showed a largely failing picture.

For example, 29 hospitals had agreed to screen almost 78,000 new mothers for post-natal depression each year as part of the scheme.

But over the course of two years between 2016 and 2018 the hospital screened a little over 28,000 patients and just 570 were offered help, a fraction of the 12,000 t... (Read more)

Latest News