Oaklawn held a ceremonial groundbreaking, for its new crisis center on Tuesday, Aug. 8.
Larry Tracy is the President of Memorial Hospital and they are partnering with Oaklawn for this new center.
“This building is Memorials” says Kari Tarman, Executive Director at the Oaklawn Foundation, “this is a partnership between their services in the ER and our services in the mental health world.”
The new crisis center will be open 24/7 for people experiencing a mental health crisis. “They’ll decide with the patient what level of care they need,” she says, “and then they can keep them here until that level of care is available.” People can stay up to 23 hours and then staff will help to decide next steps.
Laurie Nafziger, CEO and President of Oaklawn, says that the crisis center is the in between for inpatient and outpatient care, “This crisis center will fill this missing gap,” she says, “we can meet with people, deescalate them, make a plan, asses it, and go on.”
The center will have recliners instead of beds and be staffed with mental health professionals, like therapists, doctors, nurses, peer support professionals and more.
Nafziger says that this space is unlike other, “It’s a relatively new thing for Indiana… It, in effect, is like the urgent care of the behavioral health world.”
Sheriff William Redman was at the groundbreaking. He says that this new crisis center will help people in the jails, “the last thing we want to do is have people end up in our jail that should be getting the proper help.”
It’s been in the works for a few years now and Andre Stoner from Faith in Indiana says that the and the team have been there from the start, “Faith in Indiana has been really instrumental.”
The crisis center has been partially funded by the city, “this is a combination of some funding by the state, the City of South Bend and we have money from the county commissioners.”
And, they don’t want financial hardships to deter anyone from getting the mental health help that they need, “we won’t turn anyone away who doesn’t have insurance,” Nafziger says, “that’s why we have these grants that can cover it. All are welcome.”
The goal is to have the crisis center on North Niles Avenue finished and in use by early winter.
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