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Scaled-back children's facility taking shape in Cape Girardeau
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) - 9/17/2014
Sept. 17--JEFFERSON CITY -- Missouri's top mental health official said Tuesday that the state will downsize and privatize the 32-bed Cottonwood Residential Treatment Center, a youth psychiatric facility in Cape Girardeau.
Keith Schafer, director of the Missouri Department of Mental Health, said the new system will include a 16-bed inpatient center operated by the nonprofit Community Counseling Center, which serves five counties in southeast Missouri. The inpatient center will be housed in the current psychiatric facility in Cape Girardeau, he said.
The state also plans to contract with families to provide six "treatment family homes" or "professional parent homes" for youths leaving the inpatient program and others who can be treated in those settings, he said. Between six and 18 children could be treated in that part of the program.
More intensive than a foster home, a professional parent home requires one-on-one care in return for a payment of about $125 a day, Schafer said.
While a professional parent home can serve only one child at a time, up to three children can be served in a treatment family home, he said.
Schafer, who went to Cape Girardeau to explain the plan to Cottonwood's staff on Tuesday, said the facility's 87 full-time employees will be given preference for similar positions in the new inpatient program or vacant positions at nearby state facilities.
"If they're fairly entrepreneurial, they can decide if they want to run one of the treatment homes or one of the professional parent homes," he said.
State officials said they were changing the program to make it more efficient and provide broader treatment options. Last week, Gov. Jay Nixon released $241,404 that he had withheld from Cottonwood's budget.
Virginia Young is the Jefferson City bureau chief of the Post-Dispatch. Follow her on twitter at @virginiayoung.
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