By Muriel J. Smith
If there’s any one person who is upbeat, enthusiastic, energetic, and more than capable of bringing the Children’s Psychiatric Center to even higher levels and offering more help, it’s Vera Sansone.
This talented, experienced licensed psychiatric social service worker who hails from Fair Haven, earned her degree from South Beach Psychiatric Center of SUNY. She was recently named director of the CPC, overseeing all of its 450 employees working throughout Monmouth County in its three treatment facilities, its administrative office in Eatontown well as in its highly lauded High Point School in Morganville. She comes armed for the position with education, experience, including 21 years this month with the CPC, and an upbeat attitude that cannot be denied.
“You have to have a sense of humor,” Sansone laughs, the happiness surging up from, it sounds, the bottom of her feet. “You have to be positive.”
While the CPC has always enjoyed an enviable reputation for helping all those with mental problems, depression, or specific challenges in their lives, the challenges grow even larger as more and more people turn to the CPC and other agencies like it to help them overcome difficult challenges, either long term or temporary. Sansone does not believe there are more people today with serious problems, but in her positive way, prefers to think that more people with serious problems are reaching out and now receiving the help they have always needed.
New Jersey ranks pretty high in her book as far as mental health care is concerned. The Garden State is ahead of many other states, she explains, in that it has already introduced integrated care for substance abuse problems, and is on the verge of introducing more integrated care for other serious problems as well. New Jersey “is doing a pretty good job,” Sansone asserts, in its expansion of Medicaid benefits that will enable challenged residents to seek help as outpatients, rather than through hospitalization.
As the new director of CPC, Sansone anticipates having more time to work with the board of directors and executive committee to introduce to Monmouth County on a broad basis the hot-spotting techniques designed by Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers’ Jeffrey C. Brenner, MD.
Brenner did extensive surveys to identify ‘superusers,’ visitors to emergency departments several times a year who bounce in and out of the hospital and account for 30 per cent of all health expenditures. The superusers do this, his studies showed, because they are in search of better care and don’t know where to seek it. The challenge, Brenner says, and Sansone couldn’t agree more, is redesigning the way the nation delivers health care.
In the program, which Sansone has set as one of her goals to continue improvements in health care, Superusers can be identified, then enrolled in a countywide care management service which works with all the providers in the county to ensure patients get needed primary care, behavioral health and social services, and thus have the added benefit of reducing costly inpatient care.
“I’m confident the Board, the executive committee and myself can work through the planning process for health care reform,” Sansone said, saving the higher cost of in-hospital stays while at the same time providing better, more comprehensive health care to those who may have been fearful to ask for help, or simply do not know where to turn or are stigmatized by their settings. As a result, they have developed serious illnesses, chronic problems, and problems that can be taken care of so much more economically and better when we are all working together and pooling all our resources.” Those in need of psychiatric care may simply be pre-occupied with other challenges, both emotionally and psychiatric and cannot respond. Some simply need help in applying for benefits. Working together can resolve all of this,” she said confidently.
And when you hear Vera Sansone say it, somehow you know it’s going to be done.
The CPC sees more than 8,000 people annually, she continued, for a variety of behavioral disorders, both temporary and significant and long term.
Rather than be depressed at some of the stories she hears in her routine day, Sansone admits to being energized by the fact she is in a place that can do something to help others; she has the necessary training and a staff well trained, conscientious, and understanding to can accomplish their tasks. “We’re a resilient lot,” she laughs, “even if it is a difficult world.”
The people in need of help are also resilient, she continues, saying, “it’s amazing to see the strength of some people. It’s all those things that make me feel good about what we all do, and knowing we are, and will continue to be, an important par t of health care.”
Both Sansone and her husband Guy Naringi dedicate their professional lives to helping others. They met at Stony Brook, and Guy is Affirmative Action director at South Bend Psychiatric Center in Staten Island. Their son, David Naringi? “I think he’s seen enough of social workers at home,” She bubbles, “he’s got a master’s degree in business administration.”
When she isn’t helping others, Sansone unabashedly admits she’s a foodie… not the kind who cooks daily…”although I cook a mean turkey for the family on holidays…I am Italian, you know…” but the kind who seeks out the small ethnic restaurants on the west side of Red Bank or Asbury Park. “I love the local businesses, I love the special little restaurants…and when the sun is out, I’m a beach person.” In short, this Brooklyn native admits, after more than 20 years living in Monmouth County, “I love the arts, the theater, the culture, the people. This is all just such a special place.”
