EUGENE, Ore — A major change is coming to how our community handles youth mental health emergencies.
Lane County is ending its 20-year partnership with the Riverview Center for Growth to bring youth mobile crisis services in-house.
“We have supported Riverview for many years in their crisis program with flexible funding that we received from the state… over the years since mobile crisis became mandated, that funding has become much more constrained and much more specific,” says Eve Gray, Director of Lane County Health and Human Services.
Riverview’s Executive Director Meghan Melton says, “We realize that at federal, state and local levels, that funding is shifting, and There are a lot of consequences to that.”
For the past twenty years, Riverview Center for Growth has been the primary lifeline for lane county families navigating youth mental health crises.
After a significant shift in state mandates for mobile crisis care and restricted funding from Oregon Health Authority, Lane County has had to end its long standing contract with the non-profit and will absorb youth mobile crisis into the county’s internal program.
The contract ends on April 30th.
Gray adds, “We had to use that funding now to cover the entire mobile crisis response system, including adults and youth 24/7… growing to 24/7 service and covering all parts of the county. We also needed to make sure that we were utilizing the mobile crisis dollars for the work that is mandated as our priority, and not focusing those dollars on work that is not mandated, though the work is very good and very important.”
Gray says the county would’ve faced a $500,000 budget deficit if they continued to fund riverview…
The transition has not been without friction. Initial comments from Riverview claimed that Lane County would not respond to up to 80 percent of their typical calls.
But, the county clarified that they will respond in person to every crisis call that can’t be resolved over the phone.
We asked the county if they have the capacity to handle more calls or if calls will go unanswered due to this new system.
“Mobile crisis response systems are mandated to respond to any call where the caller or their loved one feels that the individual is in crisis. It’s self perceived or the perception of the people around them. Part of the rules is that we try to do phone de escalation first,” says Grey.
The county is actively hiring more people. They recently hired a youth-specific supervisor and they are cross training adult crisis responders to handle pediatric calls.
In the last 30 days, their average response time for urban areas in 12 minutes and for rural areas, 28 minutes.
Riverview Center for Gowth will remain open, and continue offering outpatient counseling, psychiatry and intensive in-home behavioral health care.