Editor, The Record:
Your article on the KIDS program leaves the impression that the state Health Department is considering recommending licensing KIDS.
How can a program which left Florida under heavy legal pressure, been closed down in Texas and California, now under legal pressure in Utah possibly be licensed in Bergen County?
Within a 10-mile radius of the KIDS program located in a warehouse just north of the Riverside Square Shopping Mall, off Route 4, live more social workers, clergymen, psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, psychoanalysts, health care professionals, and well-meaning, sensitive, humane persons than possibly in any other area in the country.
How can a program such as this continue to operate in our midst?
Miller Newton testified under oath in a New Jersey court that the Bergen County program is essentially the same as that operating in El Paso, Texas. The Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse documented 97 findings of fact on abuse and violations of client rights, which led to revocation of the KIDS of El Paso license.
Yet we allow this program in Bergen County.
Have we lost our social conscience and sense of social responsibility, particularly in regard to the urgent needs of our young people?
CONRAD DeMASTER
Waldwick