NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The hope is that the new eight-bed care facility for adults for Horizons Mental Health Center will open this month.
"We just got our certificate from the state fire marshal," said Nicole Eitzen with Horizons. "I have sent that to the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services. They handle all of our licensing. We've got everything done on our end, but they may have to do a walk through and just approve us as a residential care facility."
The Horizons Carrefour Crisis Center was purchased thanks to a grant from the federal government as part of the process of making Horizons a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic.
"The reason that name was chosen, our staff kind of helped us develop the name for that," Eitzen said. "It's another name for crossroads and we felt that was really important for us to represent with this crisis center. Just because, a lot of the consumers that we may have coming to us are in a really tough place. The facility will be an eight-bed facility. We can take up to eight people at one time. It will be staffed 24-7. We're working on getting that staffing up and going, we still have a few shifts that we are trying to get filled right now."
Those shifts are generally weekends, according to Eitzen.
"It will be completely voluntary," Eitzen said. "We will not take anybody that doesn't want to be there. It will not be an involuntary, locked facility. It will be totally voluntary and it will not be locked."
The hope is to get emergency mental health care for those who need it.
"It can be a way to defer from the high utilization of the ER for mental health reasons," Eitzen said. "It will also be used as a tool to divert from hospitalization. Law enforcement, I know, is really looking forward to utilizing this as a resource, because they want to avoid jail admissions that may be due to a mental health reason."
Eitzen sees this as another way that they can work together with the police department's crisis support team when the case warrants such a placement.