Edgewood, KY—St. Elizabeth Healthcare has invested $250,000 to assist Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky (CHNK) toward creating a new psychiatric residential treatment facility in Northern Kentucky. An integral component of the behavioral health continuum of care, psychiatric residential treatment provides comprehensive mental health treatment to youth who due to mental illness, substance abuse, or severe emotional disturbance are in need of treatment that can most effectively be provided in a residential setting. Often these youth are transitioning from a psychiatric hospital, but need to practice and strengthen skills they are learning before they return home or to a foster care environment.
Psychiatric residential treatment care is designed to offer a short-term, intense, focused mental health treatment program that promotes a successful and permanent return to family and community. Although longer in duration than most other levels of care, residential treatment is typically shorter than if the youth were hospitalized.
“At St. Elizabeth Healthcare, we are committed to the well-being of Northern Kentucky,” said Garren Colvin, St. Elizabeth President and CEO. “We are confident that this new relationship with Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky will advance this commitment and positively impact our region’s most vulnerable youth and their families.”
St. Elizabeth conducts a community health needs assessment every three years to better understand the overarching needs of Northern Kentucky residents. Two top priorities identified in the most recent assessment focus on behavioral health and substance use disorder, and this investment in Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky helps address those needs.
“St. Elizabeth’s support of our psychiatric residential treatment facility program means only good things for Northern Kentucky youth in need of residential mental health and addiction treatment services,” said Rick Wurth, Chief Executive Officer of Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky. “There are only 10 such facilities in Kentucky with none in Northern Kentucky before now. Before CHNK’s March opening of this treatment line, area youth in need of this type of care had to go as far as Louisville or Owensboro even though they resided in Northern Kentucky.”