An alternative to jail or the emergency room could soon be coming for people experiencing mental health or substance abuse crises in Elkhart County.
This week, Oaklawn announced it plans to add a 12-bed crisis center to its Goshen campus using nearly $4 million in state funding. Oaklawn CEO Laurie Nafziger said construction will hopefully start in the fall and the space will be ready for the spring of 2024.
Like the facility coming to St. Joseph County, the Elkhart crisis center is meant for residents going through mental health or addiction crises. Currently people in those situations are often taken to the emergency room or to jail and that’s something Nafziger hopes the center is able to change once it’s built.
“It really fills this huge gap that has existed in our mental health system for forever,” Nafziger said.
The center is designed to provide care for up to 24 hours. After that, residents will be discharged with a treatment plan or directed to a longer-term facility.
The $3.9 million from the state comes from a newly created bucket made up of money from the American Rescue Plan and national opioid settlement. Nafziger said she’s also gotten pledges of funding from local governments including Elkhart County and the cities of Elkhart, Goshen and Bristol.
The support for Oaklawn from governments in Elkhart County stands in contrast to the support the nonprofit has received in St. Joseph County. Last winter, the all-Republican St. Joseph County commissioners effectively pulled funding for a crisis center in South Bend and a majority-Republican council declined to reallocate the money.
The city of South Bend eventually stepped in to put $2.6 million into the center which will be completed this winter. St. Joseph County did eventually give $600,000, which Nafziger said will likely be matched by the state.
Still, Nafziger said she’s glad to have support from officials in Elkhart County.
“Sometimes as I was meeting with cities it was having the police chiefs say to a mayor ‘Oh we want this’ that helped the mayors on board too,” said Nafziger.
In addition to the dual crisis centers, Nafziger said funding is also in place to operate a mobile crisis team in Elkhart County to respond to calls involving nonviolent mental health crises. Oaklawn currently operates a team in St. Joseph County that fields calls from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“Once we’re fully operational, we’ll have the mobile crisis team embedded in that same physical location so that they can go out as needed or stay in and there’ll be a certain synergy and efficiency that goes with that,” Nafziger said.
Oaklawn was one of 15 community health groups that received state funding to start or expand similar crisis centers.
