Northwest Iowa — The Sioux Rivers Mental Health Region, which is headquartered in Orange City is still seeking a location for their access center.
Sioux Rivers CEO Shane Walter says that after Woodbury County left the Sioux Rivers region, the Sioux Rivers Crisis Center was suddenly located outside the region’s geographical borders. With the expansion of Sioux Rivers Mental Health Region’s footprint, Walter told us about three months ago that they were looking at Sheldon as a possible location for their new access center.
(as said) “We’re still in the process of looking or visiting with providers in the area — and by area I mean within the region — to determine who may be able to provide the services. We you know, of course are working with our mental health centers. Plains Area had indicated they would be interested in providing those services to the region. So they’re clearly involved in that discussion, but we’re trying to determine still — a suitable location and we’ve entered into some discussions with a couple of different providers.”
Walter says they need to get it taken care of sooner rather than later, so they hope a decision can be made soon.
(as said) “…trying to get that nailed down so that we can proceed because obviously we’ve got budgeting that needs to be done and those services are to be in place by July 1st or as close to that as possible. So we’re kind of in a hurry-up mode here. “
He says they’re hoping to provide a number of services in what they call an “access center.”
(as said) “23-hour observation, crisis residential, mobile crisis — which would be staged out of that building essentially — and subacute with some associated substance treatment services, evaluation, and referral… A number of things under the one roof. So we’re still looking at most of those components. However, we’re not certain about the subacute piece of that because that’s a fairly high-cost, intensive service that if we can contract that… subcontract that out to another provider elsewhere within actually a hundred and twenty miles of us — we can qualify then as what we would call a virtual access center.”
Walter says they hope to provide the services from an existing building. He says they’re not looking to build at this time.
Walter tells us the Sioux Rivers Region includes Plymouth, Sioux, Lyon, O’Brien, and Dickinson counties at this time, and Emmet County has signed an agreement to join on July 1st, 2021.
