LOCAL

ADAMHS Boards look to establish children's stabilization unit

Kristi R. Garabrandt
The Daily Jeffersonian

The ADAMHS Boards of the Belmont, Harrison, Monroe, and Muskingum areas, which serve Coshocton, Guernsey, Morgan, Muskingum Noble and Perry counties, along with the boards of Jefferson and Washington counties are working together to establish a 16 to 20 bed children's short-term residential behavioral health crisis stabilization facility. 

The boards, according to Mental Health and Recovery Services Board Executive Director Misty Cromwell, have been talking about establishing the facility somewhere along the Guernsey/Belmont county line and are looking for a building or property.

Currently, the collaborative boards have one residential facility for youth in Cambridge, which is licensed for 14 beds. However since COVID-19 it has been operating at a reduced capacity of eight beds. 

None of these counties, however, have a facility to admit youth in crisis. These youths are typically held in the local emergency rooms until they are released or transported to an out-of-county facility, if there is one available. 

Cromwell said this current system of care places an undue burden on the local emergency rooms due to the need to use additional staff and resources to accommodate the youth during these periods. 

"When kids of high risk need stabilization or in-patient services at lot of time they are going out of county. We are shipping them up to Youngstown, Akron, down as far as Cincinnati," Cromwell said. "We are paying for transportation costs because when those kids have to be placed somewhere else, they are usually transported by law enforcement a lot of the times so we have had increased transportation costs." 

One of the primary shortcomings when it comes to care for youth is the lack of a youth crisis stabilization unit and the lack of a facility to care for them within the counties where a youth is placed on a hold or waiting transport to another facility. According to Cromwell, minors placed on a hold are vulnerable because they lose the ability to be connected to community services in a responsive way once released.  

The main goal to having a youth crisis stabilization unit is to provide services to youth with a mental health crisis without holding them in the emergency rooms before release or admittance to other psychiatric facilities that do not require hospitalization due to physical condition.  

"Belmont, Jefferson and our board area have two state group homes, Liberty Manor and Country Manor Garden in Cambridge, which they have had a long-standing partnership to manage and oversee," Cromwell said. The partnership has been in place since the closing of the Cambridge State Hospital.  

Based on this, the boards felt it best to see if they could work together to help keep more kids as close to home as they possibly can and provide short-term stabilization, while keeping the families connected during treatment. 

Cromwell approached the Guernsey County Commissioners seeking help in locating property where the facility could be could be construct on or building that could be renovated into a youth crisis stabilization facility. 

Cromwell said about two years they looked at the former site of the Cambridge Behavioral Health Services and several other locations but the prices were astronomical. 

The commissioners advised her that they did have a county building that has gas, electricity and a big parking lot that they are trying to sell and that the price would be nowhere near as high.

Cromwell said she would have to see the building first and they could further discuss it.