Youngkin details mental health reform efforts
Youth facility touted as advancing state's commitment
Gov. Glenn Youngkin celebrates the opening of Youth for Tomorrow's new Richmond behavioral health center.
RICHMOND — As Virginia's effort to transform an overwhelmed behavioral health system moves from tackling the biggest gap — help for people in a crisis — to helping them before things get bad, a foundation that offers walk-in therapy is moving into Richmond.
The Youth for Tomorrow facility in western Henrico County is the latest step in a continuing quiet buildout of Virginia's Right Help Right Now behavioral health reform, said Gov. Glenn Youngkin, at a ceremony marking the nonprofit's addition of a Richmond center to its eight Northern Virginia counseling centers.
"We've talked about, really, three phases — pre-crisis, in crisis and post-crisis — and here's an opportunity for folks who have pre-crisis needs to have them fulfilled," Youngkin said.
"Oftentimes, family members will call and they can't find services for a child that they know might need some help. But it also is post-crisis service. And so, many Virginians post-crisis, of course, have follow-up care, and they can do that here as well. And so we're able ... to meet both those needs through great partners like Youth For Tomorrow," Youngkin said.
Youth for Tomorrow, founded by former Washington Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs, started in 1986 operating a residential treatment facility for boys. In Richmond, it will offer outpatient behavioral health care with a dozen therapists, handling referrals from community services boards as well as walk-ins, said Carl Street, vice president for behavioral health services.
Dealing with gaps in crisis response was the first big push of Youngkin's Right Help Right Now reform, but recent efforts have boosted capacity for people before a crisis and for people who no longer need hospital care.
Virginia now has 56 "assertive community treatment teams" — teams of social workers, nurses and psychiatrists who reach out to individuals with serious mental illnesses with mental and medical health care, typically daily, and help with everyday tasks clients often have trouble managing.
"We now have school-based mental health in 23 divisions," Youngkin said.
"By the end of the year, we'll have 100 small group homes that will be available for folks that are being discharged" from state mental hospitals, he said.
"The path back to community oftentimes needs to go through a managed place to live. And that's why having a group home to go to where there can be support services — that is your step back to your community. And we had ... no capacity there as a state, and so we're going to continue to build capacity," he said.
Youngkin said the number of registered peer recovery specialists has more than doubled. These are individuals who have rebuilt their lives after difficult spells of mental illness and whose ability to share what that involves has helped thousands of other Virginians.
