The place at 186 Crested Iris Drive will serve youth with an average stay of three to five days. Around 27 health care providers will work to stabilize patients. They’ll give them tools for managing mental health conditions.
“The goal here is really to stabilize the patient. We want to make sure they’re going to have the tools they need to go back out in society,” said Kelly Honeycutt, director of operational support at Harnett Cape Fear Valley, to ABC11.
The nearest spot offering this kind of care was in Fayetteville, around a 45-minute to one-hour drive for many families. Sharita Godwin, DNP, RN, patient care manager at the hospital, said teens often waited days or even months in emergency rooms for placement. Some patients waited up to two months.
“We don’t have anything for adolescents. So what you see is a lot of times they are present to the emergency department. They’re sitting there, they’re waiting for days,” Godwin said to ABC11.
John Bigger, corporate director of psychological services, said the health system has worked on the project for more than five years. On the ribbon-cutting day, he estimated two or three kids waited for treatment in emergency departments at Central Harnett Hospital, Betsy Johnson Hospital in Dunn, and Cape Fear Medical Center in Fayetteville.
North Carolina has just 17 pediatric inpatient psychiatric spots serving more than 2.3 million children. The new beds bring the state’s total to around 388.
More children in the state reported having at least one mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral health problem. The figure jumped from 22.6% in 2018 to 25.4% in 2024, according to the National Survey of Children’s Health.
State Sen. Jim Burgin helped secure $8 million in one-time state funding for construction. He plans to ask for $10 million more to double the unit’s size.