Crisis center coming together
The new regional mental health crisis center in Coeur d’Alene will be managed by someone who is no stranger to handling difficult, sometimes dangerous, situations in North Idaho.
Longtime FBI agent Don Robinson was hired this month to fill the position of crisis and intervention services manager.
“Don Robinson has a long history of crisis intervention and management that make him uniquely skilled at working with the population the crisis center will serve,” said Claudia Miewald, Kootenai Health’s director of behavioral health services. “From 2005 to 2012 he worked as the supervisory special agent of the Coeur d’Alene resident agency of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. We are very fortunate to have our first staff member of the crisis center be such a well-qualified individual.”
Robinson retired in August from his position as an FBI supervisory special agent, according to his profile on LinkedIn, a social media site for professional networking.
The Coeur d’Alene crisis center is projected to open in mid-December.
State lawmakers passed the Behavioral Health Community Crisis Centers Act during the 2014 legislative session. The laws calls for the establishment of three crisis centers throughout the state. The same year the statute calling for the centers was enacted, the Legislature appropriated funds for a center in Idaho Falls. That crisis center opened its doors last December.
Last spring, legislators appropriated $1.72 million for a second center, and Coeur d’Alene was deemed the location for the facility. It will serve Idaho’s Regions 1 and 2, which comprise the state’s 10 northern counties.
The Northern Idaho Crisis Center will be located in the Moody Center, a building on the Kootenai Health campus known as the “old Panhandle Health building.” The older, one-story brick building already houses offices used by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare for mental health services. One side of the building will be used for the crisis center.
The center will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and its clients will be men and women who are at least 18 and need immediate help with mental health or substance abuse issues. The services will be provided at no charge.
State statute calls for the center to have 10 beds for men and 10 for women.
The crisis center in Idaho Falls reported serving between 70 and 80 patients a month during the second quarter of this year.
Because the center’s purpose will be to assess patients and help them access additional community resources that meet their needs, the center will serve patients for less than 24 hours. When appropriate, referrals to inpatient or outpatient hospital care or counseling will be made before a patient leaves the center.
Personnel from local law enforcement agencies have been advocating for a mental health facility in North Idaho for several years.
“Every day we are called to help people who are in crisis. These people do not know where to turn and in their desperation, call for law enforcement to help,” wrote Kootenai County Sheriff Ben Wolfinger, in a letter published Sunday in The Press. “Our deputies are problem solvers, but their expertise is in policing, not mental health services. We see the Northern Idaho Crisis Center as a great resource to be able to point people to a facility where they will be able to get immediate help as well as avenues and connections for follow-up care in or near the communities where they live.”
Caryl Johnston, director of Northwest Hospital Alliance, will give a presentation about the new center to the Kootenai County Board of Commissioners during a special meeting at 10 a.m. Oct. 2 in the third-floor boardroom of the county administration building, 451 Government Way.
Maureen Dolan can be reached at mdolan@cdapress.com.