A new model of care
STATE
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
Bend stabilization
center seeks solid
ground to help
people in crisis
By GARRETT ANDREWS
The Bulletin
Communities have long
operated mental health crisis
facilities, as well as residen-
tial care facilities for people
with serious mental illness.
What sets the Deschutes
County Stabilization Center
apart is a room off the center’s
multidisciplinary hub that
most days buzzes with staff
activity. The 23-hour obser-
vation room, also known as
a respite room, is quiet by
design. Against one wall is a
row of recliners that lie all the
way back. On another, a bur-
bling water feature.
The space is intended for
people in a state of mind
where talking through their
problems is unlikely to
resolve them. They need
appointments for a higher
level of care, and often, their
basic needs met.
The recliners were inspired
by a facility Harris toured
in Kansas City, Missouri.
That project featured reclin-
ers and 23-hour observation,
but didn’t accept walk-in cli-
ents, which struck Harris as a
major missed opportunity.
The 23-hour requirement
is important here, as facilities
that allow longer stays are
considered residential care
FEEL THE SPEED,
EVEN AT PEAK TIMES.
DEAN GUERNSEY/Bend Bulletin
The bullpen area in the Deschutes County Stabilization Center is active with workers helping peo-
ple in crisis.
facilities and thus are subject
to diff erent regulations.
At any given time, one or
two people can be found in
the respite area, under a blan-
ket or eating a cup of noodles.
Only about 22% of peo-
ple who come to the center
require this level of care. It
may not seem like much, but
money is tight in local gov-
ernments and mental health
crisis has not been prioritized
as a need, Harris said.
“Why don’t more com-
munities have this?” Harris
asked. “We can bill for some
of the services we provide
to generate revenue, but if
someone is sleeping, there’s
nothing we can bill for that.”
Funding obstacles
When the center opened at
the height of the pandemic,
it operated during business
hours on weekdays.
“Back then, you needed
to have your crisis Monday
through Friday, 8 to 5,” Har-
ris said. “If you had it after
hours, you were probably
going to see law enforcement.
That’s a pretty big gap.”
A $2.4 million grant from
the Oregon Criminal Justice
Commission enabled the cen-
ter to operate 24-7 starting in
October 2020. But it’s only
a 2-year grant, not a perma-
nent fi x. Harris will go after
the same money this May, but
there’s only $10 million to go
around the state, and nothing
is guaranteed.
If Deschutes County
doesn’t get the grant, Har-
ris said she needs to have
answers about funding by the
end of June .
With the center’s uncertain
fi nancial future, Deschutes
County commissioners have
been pressuring St. Charles
Health System and the cit-
ies of Redmond and Bend to
pay in to help keep it open
24-7. The city of Bend paid
$70,000 as an initial contri-
bution, St. Charles and Red-
mond did not contribute.
Supporters at the county
point to the fact Sheriff Shane
Nelson has paid more than
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$700,000 from the sheriff ’s
offi ce to the project and has
committed to pay $570,000
in fi scal year 2022.
“When you talk about the
national movement of real-
locating funds from law
enforcement this is a perfect
example of that,” Harris said.
COVID-19 protocols have
limited the number of arrest-
ees accused of low-level
crimes permitted in the jail,
which makes the stabiliza-
tion center more important to
deputies as an option to bring
people in crisis, said sheriff ’s
spokesman Jayson Janes.
“It is most helpful for us
on those calls where some-
one is experiencing a mental
health crisis but not commit-
ting a crime … and the person
needs to get out of that situa-
tion,” Janes wrote to The Bul-
letin. “We can take them to a
safe environment and they
can talk with mental health
professionals to help them
with their crisis.”
Commissioner Phil Chang
recently accompanied Harris
and county behavioral health
director Janice Garceau to St.
Charles to lobby the health
system to help fund stabiliza-
tion center operations.
“I think the city of Bend,
the city of Redmond and St.
Charles hospital all benefi t
from the stabilization center
to the point that fi nancial con-
tribution would be justifi ed,”
Chang told The Bulletin. “In
the past it was very common
for those people experienc-
ing mental health challenges
to be accompanied by police
offi cers at the emergency
department, sometimes for
several hours. So having an
alternative place for people
experiencing mental health
crises to go and an alternative
place for law enforcement
offi cers to take them frees up
human resources, space and
other resources to focus on
other public safety and health
needs.”
Commissioner Patti Adair
as well has been vocal about
other partners funding the
stabilization center, noting
63% of clients treated there
reside in the city of Bend.
Iman Simmons, chief
operating offi cer for St.
Charles Health System, said
the system has had to focus
limited resources on other
pressing needs.
“We are absolutely sup-
portive of Deschutes Coun-
ty’s eff orts to help bridge the
gap in behavioral health ser-
vices with the opening of a
stabilization center,” Sim-
mons said. “But we also
acknowledge our region is
lacking other kinds of critical
services including residential
and outpatient treatment pro-
grams for our pediatric popu-
lation, which is where we are
planning to focus our atten-
tion and resources.”
A spokesperson for the
city of Bend said the manage-
ment and fi nance departments
Behavioral health technician
Dominique Gray turns on a
water feature in the respite
area at the Deschutes County
Stabilization Center in Bend in
December.
are not considering ongoing
funding of the stabilization
center and provided language
from the city’s 2000 contract:
“The City’s role is one-time
funding; it has no involve-
ment in the operation of the
Center.”
In August, the Deschutes
County Commission sent a
letter to the Redmond City
Council requesting a contri-
bution of $250,000. There is
not currently a plan to pay
into the center, according
to Redmond City Manager
Keith Witcosky.
“The stabilization center
has provided a critical service
to our police department, par-
ticularly as we see an increase
of calls for people in crisis,”
Witcosky said. “The funding
request will ultimately be a
decision for our city council
and will merit more dialogue
with the county. If the county
continues with the formal
request, it will be a subject
for our budget deliberations.”
As of a year ago, Red-
mond offi cials were planning
to open an on-site mental
health triage center — a proj-
ect similar to the Bend sta-
bilization center — at a new
police station on the north
side of town, currently in the
planning phase.
Rep. Jack Zika helped
secure $3 million in funding
for the project, which is not
fi nalized and may change,
Witcosky said.
Another model
Harris said if she had the
staff and the funding, she’d
put it toward a pilot program
she’s developing to respond
to mental health crises with-
out police. It’s the same
idea as Eugene’s infl uential
CAHOOTS program, which
dispatches a medic and a cri-
sis worker — and not police
— on crisis calls. The closest
local off ering to CAHOOTS
is the city and county’s co-re-
sponder program, where a
county mental health worker
responds to crisis calls along-
side a uniformed Bend police
offi cer.
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DEAN GUERNSEY/Bend Bulletin
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Diff erent kind of care
DEAN GUERNSEY/Bend Bulletin
RD
BEND — Holly Har-
ris toured 14 facilities in
fi ve states while developing
Deschutes County’s stabiliza-
tion center for people in men-
tal health crisis around seven
years ago.
Harris, the county’s man-
ager of crisis services, was
looking for a psychiat-
ric emergency facility that
accepted walks-ins and police
drop-off s and was open 24-7.
“No one was quite doing
what we wanted to do,” she
said on a recent tour of the
center on the public safety
campus on Poe Sholes Road
in Bend. “Every place was
doing it a little bit diff erently.
So we took the best of what
we saw across the country
brought it back, vetted it and
here we are.”
Since the ribbon was cut
in June 2020, the stabiliza-
tion center is credited with
diverting hundreds of people
who would have ended up in
a hospital involuntarily or in
jail facing criminal charges.
But now county offi cials fac-
ing an uncertain fi nancial
future are calling on others to
help foot the bill, while oth-
ers in the mental health fi eld
are urging them to do more to
keep people from ever reach-
ing the stabilization center.
CAHOOTS and the city of
Eugene have been inundated
with questions from local
leaders around the country
interested in starting similar
programs, according to Chris
Bouneff , director of the Ore-
gon chapter of the National
Alliance for Mental Illness.
Bouneff cautioned local
leaders to not rest on their
laurels.
“I always caution commu-
nities, especially in our state,
don’t overpromise, because
if you overpromise, these
things will underdeliver,” he
said. “They are an import-
ant feature of a full spectrum
of services in a community.
Don’t lose sight of the full
spectrum.
“It would be like building
an emergency room to treat
heart attacks, but not working
on preventing people from
developing heart disease, nor
following up with their treat-
ment after they leave.”
Bouneff pointed to the
example of Portland’s Unity
Center for Behavioral Health,
a 24-hour crisis response
facility that was feted widely
when it opened in 2017, but
which he says has become
overburdened as a result of
a tremendous need it cannot
alone address.
“Unity is a good thing, but
it’s one thing. Same with the
center in Deschutes County,”
Bouneff said. “You can’t lose
sight of all the other things
you need, because the whole
goal ought to be to keep peo-
ple out of that center and
make sure people recuper-
ate to full health after a stay
there. If it’s the only resource
available, it will lose its abil-
ity to have an impact on the
community.”
Lately, it’s been Harris
who’s asked to speak to local
offi cials from around the
country wrestling with the
same issues — Connecticut,
Alaska, Virginia, Arizona.
She presented at the Crisis
Intervention Team Interna-
tional Conference in August,
and at the time of her inter-
view, she was preparing to
address offi cials with the city
of Berkeley, California.
“We didn’t have a ton
of money thrown at us, and
we had a ton of obstacles
thrown our way, but it can be
done,” Harris said. “I think
what we’ve shown is if we
can do it, I’m 100% certain
other communities can do it
too.”
With a year of 24-7 service,
Harris thinks there’s now an
expectation in the local men-
tal health community. One
fi gure in particular motivates
her: 2% of the center’s clients
report they would have carried
out plans to kill themselves
were the facility not available
as an option.
“It’s hard to quantify, but
we know we’re improving
people’s lives.”
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