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07/05/2017 07:00 AMNeil Quatrano is the owner and founder of Behavioral Management, LLC, located at 33 Bernhard Road in North Haven. Even before starting the business, helping individuals with behavioral and emotional disabilities was something that he enjoyed doing.
“There’s a great sense of pride in being able to provide services,” Neil says, “I’m grateful that I’m able to do something that I really enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis, and it doesn’t feel like work when it’s something you enjoy.”
Neil’s undergraduate degree is in special education, and he started working in group homes for private agencies, doing direct care and then going into management. He also worked at Yale for a while in different areas, including Yale Behavioral Health.
He did home care for a number of years as a behavioral specialist.
“If anything I’ve been a behavior specialist for a number of years, and probably would consider that one of my strengths,” Neil says.
Working with identified patients, usually at the families’ homes, Neil says he would do “great work” with the individuals he was working with. However, after he was pulled out of the house because the individual was stable, he says three to four weeks later he would get frantic phone calls from caregivers saying “everything was falling apart.”
Neil says he got the idea to open a business with a fellow behavioral specialist 15 years ago while working in home care and seeing there was a need for therapeutic mentors and other services for children and adolescents with behavioral and emotional disorders.
“That’s what we started out doing,” Neil says, “We left our full-time jobs with benefits, and started Behavioral Management.”
Everything that Neil has done with Behavioral Management is a response to the community’s requests. He says that part of the reason he created a summer program for kids with behavioral and emotional needs is because most summer camps won’t take them.
Neil says that Behavioral Management is “my baby,” and wants to make sure the quality of services are very good, and says that’s something he’s always concerned about. He says he couldn’t have done what he’s done throughout the years without the support of his wife and the team he has around him now and in the past.
“Everybody that has come my way that we’ve pulled together has been extremely supportive once they understand where I’ coming from and why I do what I do,” Neil says.
Gretchen Law is someone that Neil calls a mentor and says he owes a lot of what he does today to her, and that she taught him a lot about mental illness.
“She is such an inspiration, and I truly owe her,” Neil says, “What I liked about that place was that it had a homey feeling, and I really believe that the success we have today is because I try to create that home-like experience for the individuals here.”
Helping those with special needs is not just Neil’s business; he does so in his personal life as well. Neil says that he and his wife have been foster parenting for about 20 years.
It started when Neil began mentoring a child for a private agency when he was doing home care. The child had been living his maternal grandmother after being removed from his biological mother.
The grandmother was diagnosed with leukemia and told Neil that she was going through treatments. Neil was hoping for the best outcome, but unfortunately that was not the case.
“He’s the reason why we became foster parents,” Neil says, “Because we had a standing relationship with him, he’d come spend weekends with us because his grandmother needed a break.”
It came to a point where Neil and his wife were asked to be his foster parents because it didn’t look like the grandmother was going to make it. Thanksgiving evening, the grandmother called to say goodbye because she wasn’t going to last the night.
“She asked me to either make sure I keep him or I give him back to his mother,” Neil says while fighting back tears, “So we kept him.”
Working with the Department of Children and Families, Neil found that the mother was able to turn her life around, and the mother was able to re-adopt the child.
Neil says that he and his wife have had over 49 kids in their home over the years with the intent to eventually reunite them with family members.
“Some of them have just not been able to find family and have just…we’re their parents,” Neil says.
Neil says he’s had one person for about six years that he’s seen her off to college, and now she’s graduated, living in her own place, and is successful. He says she attributes that success to being in a supportive, loving home, which Neil was able to provide.
Individuals with specials needs may have had negative experiences because of their disorders, but Neil says he loves to see their self-esteem and self-concept change because of the services and support he offers.
“Our whole goal is to make them successful and feel successful to their potential,” Neil says.