By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
MANDEVILLE – The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina striking St. Tammany Parish in 2005 left more than its share of physical destruction.
But in the months and years to follow, parish officials discovered something else, perhaps more troublesome, for the residents who call the North Shore home.
Mental health illnesses, much of it exacerbated by the storm, brought the problem in the parish to the forefront of local society. Since then, a high percentage of suicides in St. Tammany added to a spotlight on the lack of services here for mental health problems.
Parish leaders reacted and created a Task Force to study the issue for solutions, leading to a planned community in Mandeville called Safe Haven that will soon offer “a comprehensive campus for behavioral health problems.”
Safe Haven is proving to be such a state-of-the-art operation that Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards visited the parish two days before Thanksgiving at the request of Parish President Pat Brister to tour the campus grounds where the center will reside. He made a point to compliment parish officials for taking the state lead with the challenging problem.
Edwards acknowledged “this problem is not peculiar to St. Tammany so I applaud the pro-active approach you have taken. Your North Shore community is doing this better than the rest of the state.”
After the parish spent $50,000 for a Master Plan by a consulting group it provided a blueprint to move forward which Brister has pushed hard since tackling the situation.
Kelly Rabalais, an in-house legal counsel to Brister, was handed the reins of Safe Haven as the project manager and said she feels passionate about seeing it to completion “because we’re helping people and it’s the right thing to do.”
Property for Safe Haven came from the former Southeast Louisiana Mental Health facility in Mandeville, which sat on 293 acres of land the parish purchased in 2015 for $15 million. Since that time they have recouped $7.7 million by selling buildings and property, while also having some of the land approved for wetlands mitigation.
Leading the way as the top problem faced by individuals with mental health issues is the lack of services, with too many unable to find help in the midst of a crisis. Law enforcement officials quickly agree that many of those people end up in jail rather than getting the help they need.
To answer that problem, the Safe Haven campus will have a Crisis Intervention Center where anyone can find help at any time of the day or night, 365 days a year. After individuals are assessed for drug or alcohol problems, or to determine what other mental health issues they face, the system will be coordinated to get immediate help on site, or get them to a facility where they can be helped. A case manager will track the progress of each person to ensure they don’t lose their connection to the help they need.
Rabalais said the Safe Haven center is currently aiming at a 100 percent opening by early 2018, although over $4.6 million in improvements still needed to the Crisis Intervention Center could get on the fast track and lead to an opening by late 2017 at the earliest.
The Northlake Behavioral Hospital has continued to operate on site since purchasing the buildings there, while the Florida Parishes Human Services Authority is also already operational with a link to rehab and mental health illness facilities throughout the North Shore area.
Other agencies also operating on site already are the St. Tammany division of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), while the St. Tammany School Board has a GED program, a virtual school and two alternative schools operating there.
“We have several components in place already, but the Crisis Intervention Center is the big piece we are pushing to get finished since it will provide help for anyone, at any time, when they face a crisis,” Rabalais said.
The study for the parish has set a target number of 5,000 patients a year that the center will expect to see. Just last year there were 2,160 visits to local emergency rooms by people who had a mental health illness of some kind.
That doesn’t include the fact many people with drug, alcohol or other mental health problems ended up in jail, where the study said 65 percent of the inmates are dealing with some form of substance abuse.
For anyone who shows up at the front door of the Crisis Intervention Center they will be analyzed by a triage team of a licensed social worker and physician’s assistant. If they need to sober up there is a social detox center with four beds and a living room atmosphere. If they have some other mental health issue there is a respite center with six to eight beds that will provide time for experts to know how best to direct them.
From there they will be moved to the services they need, whether a rehab center, connected to a doctor for outpatient treatment, sent to the Northlake Behavioral Hospital for needed services, or to any of the Florida Parishes facilities that provide all manner of mental health or rehab services.
Rabalais said there has been much time spent on the details of the program, such as ensuring there is a way to connect law enforcement to Safe Haven and then the proper way to ensure patients make it to the treatment they need. Even transportation for services is being considered since it is a problem for some.
“The devil is in the details of all this,” Rabalais added. “There is a lot to do so we don’t lose track of someone and they end up facing the same problems.”
Another challenge for the parish is to ensure the operational funds are there for a long term commitment to Save Haven. To that end they are seeking every stakeholder who could possibly be connected to the operation and see what way they can help with funding.
She said they already know that funds can come from the state, various state or federal grants, insurance paying for services, Medicaid paying for services, and also to create a foundation that will hold fundraisers.
The final stumbling block to getting Safe Haven open is in converting the current 25,000 square building into the Crisis Intervention Center. Plans are completed and the parish has set aside $4.6 million. They have already saved some of that money since initial expectations of asbestos is not as bad as they thought. But Rabalais said it will still be a big chore to get the work done by late 2017 and get the building open.
“On the record we are hoping to be open early in 2018, but we are doing all we can to get the work done faster,” she said.
Rabalais said the parish is trying to partner with as many agencies as possible to assist in providing services where they are needed. That will ultimately be the key to great success for the people in St. Tammany Parish who have needed it for so long.
“We feel like this property was a project of destiny for this facility,” she said. “We had the property already, but other providers didn’t have a place to operate from. Now we won’t be so fragmented after we retool what we have. It’s a big challenge for us to do this, but for me, it’s a welcome challenge.”
For more information on Safe Haven, or to see the complete master study go online to safehavenstp.org.