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It was in danger of shutting down altogether, but the Family & Children's Center says a new deal with a Goshen mental health provider would allow it to keep helping local kids who so desperately need it. Oaklawn Psychiatric Center will take over the FCC's residential treatment program.
“We could no longer continue to sustain the losses we were experiencing in residential treatment,” said FCC President and CEO Bruce Greenberg.
One very large piece of what the Family & Children’s Center does came from money provided by Indiana’s Department of Child Services.
“When a child is here they receive individual therapy, they receive group treatment, group therapy, they receive a nurturing environment,” Greenberg explained.
But when Indiana’s Department of Child Services cut a huge chunk of funding, it reduced the number of options for where kids could go to get help.
The FCC deals with the most troubled kids – the ones who can’t live at home. So they live at the FCC while they get that help. But the numbers from state cuts tell the story.
In 2010 about 125 kids lived there. Now that number is down to 59.
Also in 2010, the FCC employed nearly 260 people. But that number dropped to 110.
It isn’t alone. Just across the county line in Goshen, Oaklawn Psychiatric Center saw the same DCS cuts and had a similar drop in the number of kids who could get that residential treatment.
“We understand each other, let’s just say that,” said Oaklawn President and CEO Laurie Nafziger.
But Oaklawn is a larger company, offering more services. Pending regulatory approval, it will take over the live-in treatment programs at the FCC in January – leasing all eight buildings and moving the children in its own residential treatment program to the FCC next summer, at the end of the school year.
“The larger program should make it viable, in a way,” Nafziger said of combining the children in residential treatment in both facilities.
The FCC is not closing, Greenberg emphasized. Instead, he said, its focus now will be entirely on prevention and early intervention.