WellStone hosted a Mental Health Update on March 28. WellStone CEO Jeremy Blair, Emergency Services Director Paula Steele, and Director of Development Karen Petersen spoke at the event.

While WellStone has been serving the Huntsville community for over 50 years, they are currently expanding their offerings to fill in gaps along the continuum of care.

WellStone serves 14,000 clients, from across Madison and Cullman counties, per year. The organization runs over 80 distinct programs to support the mental health and substance abuse recovery needs of their clientele.

This fall, a 24-bed adolescent inpatient facility will open at WellStone’s location on Memorial Parkway.

“One of the things that was a gaping hole for this community was child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient services. Huntsville Emergency Medical Services (HEMSI) transports about 800 youth, each year, out of county for psychiatric stabilization,” explained Jeremy Blair. “Four hundred of those end up at Decatur West, that’s the nearest psychiatric hospital for adolescents. The other 400 go to Birmingham, Mobile, Dothan, Nashville, or Chattanooga.”

The building that will house Wellstone Emergency Services (WES) is currently being constructed on the north side of the WellStone campus.

Karen Petersen explained to the Huntsville Business Journal what makes this new program unique.

“WES for children and adolescents will be the first-of-its-kind in the state,” said Petersen. “The WES pediatric addition will be a stand-alone facility, specifically for children in mental health and/or substance use crisis. They’ll be able to bypass the ER and come straight to us.”

Currently, children and teens may have to wait in the ER for hours or days for a bed to become available.

Petersen explained that young people who are admitted to WES may stay there for anywhere from less than 24 hours to up to two weeks. Petersen expects that several days of care will be the most typical length of stay.

Blair stated that the purpose of this location will be to stabilize adolescents in crisis, while working with their parents and caregivers to develop individualized, long-term plans for wellness.

WES is part of an ongoing effort by WellStone to identify and fill gaps in mental health care within the Huntsville community.

In the summer of 2023, WellStone opened a 16-bed facility for adult substance abuse treatment. Blair said that there was a waiting list for this facility within two weeks of its opening.

Blair explained that WellStone’s programs bring financial, as well as health benefits to the city.

“If you take our Jail Diversion Program, where we have individuals who work with people that are in jail because of their mental health issues. We’re working to get them out of jail and into stable housing, making sure they’re following up their appointments. The last time we measured, we found we were saving somewhere around $300,000 of taxpayer dollars a year with this program,” Blair told the Business Journal.

The presence of a pediatric crisis care facility in the city of Huntsville will save local families time and money, as they will no longer have to travel great distances to visit their loved ones who are undergoing treatment. Additionally, work productivity that was formerly lost will be gained back because of the presence of the pediatric crisis center in Huntsville.

Blair explained that the opening of the adult crisis center has already had cost-saving benefits for the emergency departments at Huntsville and Crestwood Hospitals, as more resources have been freed up to attend to non mental health-related emergencies that present in those hospitals.

WellStone employs nearly 500 people in the Huntsville/Madison area and 100 people in Cullman to staff their various programs.

Businesses and individuals can support WellStone’s pediatric and adolescent emergency care center by donating to the “Be The Rock” Capital Campaign.

WellStone’s annual Beacon of Hope event will be held on May 16, 2024 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Jackson Center. David Magee, best-selling author and national recovery advocate, will be the keynote speaker for the event.