By The Numbers
Washington adolescent inpatient treatment:
• 182 treatment beds in Washington.
• 57 beds on the western side of the state.
• 16 beds in Clark County — all of them for boys.
A $1.5 million state grant will help fund a new youth treatment facility in Clark County for boys and girls with mental health and chemical dependency issues.
“All of the local legislators stepped up and really went to bat,” said Annette Klinefelter, executive director of Daybreak Youth Services. The state capital budgets set aside money for community behavioral health beds.
Adding up to 50 new beds aims to ease current geographic and gender inequalities. Despite having most of the population, Western Washington has less than one-third of Washington’s 182 youth treatment beds.
Daybreak’s current 16-bed facility off of Falk Road in Vancouver treats boys for chemical dependency. There is no treatment facility for girls in Southwest Washington.
Recently, 20 male treatment beds in the state were converted to female beds, bringing the statewide number of beds for girls up to 86.
Daybreak looks to house the new beds in Brush Prairie, where there’s enough space for animals and a therapy garden. Plans haven’t been finalized yet.
“This has been a dream since 1999,” Klinefelter said. “We’re looking at retrofitting an existing facility.”
The facility will be the first to address mental health, chemical dependency and primary care all in one place. State treatment facilities either treat mental health or chemical dependency, but not both, Klinefelter said. They’ve historically been segregated because the funding is segregated.
“It’s important to do an integrated model,” Klinefelter said.
The vast majority of children treated at Daybreak for chemical dependency have co-occurring mental health issues. They also have generally poorer health because of the toll drugs take on their bodies, Klinefelter said.
So, having all of their care in one facility with a consistent set of providers adds to their potential success.
“It just makes sense that you would do all of that in one nurturing environment,” Klinefelter said.
She aims to have the new facility open next summer.
