Strategic Behavioral Health, which announced in late March that it planned to build a $12 million youth treatment center in Garner, has closed on the land for the project.

The Memphis-based company paid $1.189 million for a 15-acre parcel in the Greenfield South Business Park, according to Wake County property records.

In March, the company said it was considering two sites in Greenfield South, which is near U.S. 70 and Interstate 40.

SBH plans to build a 56,000-square-foot facility that will be a self-contained campus providing care and schooling for children ages 6 to 17.

When it opens next summer, the project is expected to create 250 jobs and provide 92 beds for children who suffer from emotional and behavioral disorders.

Strategic Behavior Health, a Memphis company that cares for kids with emotional and behavioral disorders, announced this morning that it will build a new center in Garner that will eventually employ more than 250 people.

The exact location of the new facility has not been determined.

SBH, which operates a similar facility near Wilmington, is considering two sites in Garner in the Greenfield Business Park.

The company will invest $12 million in the 92-bed, 56,000-square-foot facility, which will be a self-contained campus providing various care for children ages 6 to 17.

A final site decision is expected to be made within 45 days, with construction beginning soon after. Construction is expected to take 10 to 12 months, and SBH plans to open the facility in the summer of 2012.

SBH has been in talks with the town of Garner for nearly two years.
 

Here are a couple of really good letters that are just too long to print and two others that ran out of time. In the first, a UNC professor argues strenuously against privatizing any more state services, saying, "The problem with 'privatizing' public services is that the first loyalty of any private company will always (and appropriately) be to its owners. We understood this truth long ago when we abandoned private
fire insurance (with fire trucks responding only if you had paid your premium) in favor of publicly funded fire departments. We know that privatizing fire protection would be a disaster for our communities. Why is it so difficult to see that health (including mental health) is just as important to our communities as safety?"

The second letter, by a professor of anthropology, attempts to explain the widespread anger in America against Hispanics.

I read with both interest and sadness the article on the lack of available care for Joshua Stewart (“Mom camps out to get spot in mental ward for son,” Jan. 27). Unfortunately, Joshua’s story is not unique. Many people living with autism or other developmental disabilities currently are unable to receive the crisis care they need throughout the state.

While Joshua is now in a state psychiatric facility, why did his family have to wait eight days? A bed at Broughton provides a solution, but a psychiatric hospital is not the best option for a child with autism. How can we improve our system of care so that needed crisis and community support services are available to all children like Joshua?

First, let’s take a look at the numbers. Joshua has autism, a developmental disability that occurs in 1 of every 110 children born today, according to the CDC (December 2009). Not all children with autism are the same and not all will need crisis services, but there are more than 9,000 children with a primary diagnosis of autism in the N.C. public schools, and the number grows each year. At the Autism Society of North Carolina, calls for crisis services have increased dramatically, and there are few options available to solve these crises. Children with other developmental disabilities also need crisis services, but with the recent budget cuts there is clearly not enough money to meet these needs.

Studies have shown that with appropriate community and crisis supports, children with autism can avoid institutionalization. Also, taxpayers pay significantly less when children are able to remain in their communities. The comments by Dr. Michael Lancaster (state chief of Clinical Policy) about the desire for the state to be able to support Joshua through a local crisis center and community settings reflect that the state does understand these facts. The state initiated a program to provide crisis services for adults with developmental disabilities called START (Systemic Treatment Response Assessment Team). Unfortunately, there is not a comparable program for children.

North Carolina has excellent clinically intensive support programs for people with autism in specialized programs at the Murdoch Center in Butner. However, those programs lack the capacity to serve crisis needs. And with recent significant cuts to community services, local respite options such as respite care or group homes are limited.

Children like Joshua will continue to need crisis and support services. As a state, we must decide that providing appropriate options for care is a priority and make sure that there are funds available to provide these services.

Currently, there is no safety net for children with autism or other developmental disabilities like the START program. The state must commit to establishing community-based crisis services for children with autism and other developmental disabilities. In the meantime, one short-term option for situations like Joshua’s could be to increase the capacity for crisis services for children with autism at the Murdoch Center, which has proven to be a clinically effective model. For a child like Joshua, the Murdoch program is a much better option than a psychiatric facility.

Imagine if you took your child, grandchild or family member into the doctor and had to wait eight days before receiving help. How would you feel? I think we know the answer. That is why all North Carolinians must work together to fix our system of care and ensure that this does not happen again.

Scott Badesch
Raleigh

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This letter is in response to your online story “Mom camps out to get spot in the mental ward for son.” We need to start putting more money into North Carolina’s mental health system. People like Joshua and his mom need more help than the little they are getting. Waiting eight days for a bed in a mental health hospital is awful. This is a big problem the state needs to fix whatever the cost, so that people with disabilities can get the help they need when they need it.

Joshua’s mother can’t take care of him by herself; after all she’s not superwoman. She needs help.

Corey Pahel-Short
Chapel Hill

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I read with sadness and horror about the treatment that 13-year old Joshua Stewart, an autistic boy, received from our mental health system. How can we allow such treatment for an autistic child in this day and time? Have we reverted to the 19th century with respect to the way we care for our disabled children? As a mother, my heart goes out to Ms. Mabry as she struggles to help her child.

To Gov. Bev Perdue and the N.C. General Assembly: Find a way to help Joshua and other children like him. As a caring society, we have a duty to assist the Joshua Stewarts in our state.

Fern Gunn Simeon
Durham

Our colleague Michael Biesecker has doggedly followed the deaths of patients in the state mental health system. Here is an update on Jeffrey Scott Swaim, who was found  unconscious on a Greyhound bus
two hours after being discharged from Cherry Hospital. An autopsy found that Swaim died after
ingesting a prescription painkiller given to him by the state
psychiatric facility.

Without a doubt, there are abuse and fraud within the state program that provides in-home care for older and disabled North Carolinians. People determined to cheat the system will find ways. But any attempt to root out the riffraff in order to save $100 million over two years, as state budget-cutters anticipate (Page 1B, July 6), must be tempered with the knowledge that cutting the "nonmedical transportation, errands and shopping" would be a serious hardship to many of our disabled.

And as with so many of the programs targeted during these tough budgetary times, these cuts smack of cutting off your nose to spite your face when you consider how many of the people receiving in-home care might be forced into far more expensive nursing-home environments.

In my column last week I previewed our series, "Losing Track:  North Carolina's Crippled Probation System." I also said that despite financial problems, we would continue to do this type of investigative reporting. The column was titled, "We'll keep digging deep."

Readers were supportive. "Keep up the very good work and keep shining the light," said one. Another made a reference to our previous series on problems with the sate's mental health system. "I can't tell you how grateful we are to you, to Michael Biesecker, Pat Stith and Lynn Bonner," she said referring to the reporters on that series. "All the citizens of this state should be grateful for The N&O and how they've investigated the mental health debacle. I'm sure you are going to get to the bottom of this new project." I want to point out that both projects were edited by Steve Riley, our senior editor for investigations.

Another reader, who identified himself in a phone message as a Wake schools teacher, said we did a lot of good work but that I should stop talking about it. "Isn't this you guys' jobs?" he said. "What do you want -- the Big Cookie Award? Times are tough for everybody. That's like me telling my students and their parents: 'I don't get paid much but I'm going to continue to keep doing it.' I appreciate what you do but just keep doing it. No need to blow your own trumpet."

I had never heard of the Big Cookie Award. But I want it.

As for blowing my own trumpet: Fair enough. In tomorrow's column, I blow the trumpet for open government.  We know that since 2000, 580 probationers have been convicted of killing in North Carolina. But we don't know how well they were supervised by the state. That's because the state won't give us reports that would tell us how well those probationers were supervised.  Theodis Beck, state correction secretary, should release those reports. Read more Saturday.

Mayor Kevin Foy has tapped Natalie Ammarell, a human services consultant, to chair the town’s new Mental Health Task Force.

The state's failed mental health system has forced mentally ill residents to fend for themselves for treatment and medication, town officials said in a release. UNC Hospitals uniquely affects Chapel Hill and Orange County because the hospital discharges some mentally ill patients who stay in Chapel Hill in perpetuity.

"The future of mental health care in Chapel Hill and throughout North Carolina is uncertain,” Foy says. “Therefore, local municipalities must think more about how this will affect the health and vitality of our communities.”

“Mental health issues are sometimes invisible,” said Ammarell, who studied the impact of deinstitutionalization of the mental health system in Massachusetts. "This task force will offer a great opportunity to come together to make sure we are addressing the needs of Chapel Hill residents.”

The task force will be asked to 1) assess the state of the mental health care system in the greater Chapel Hill community; 2) create broader awareness of mental health care issues in Chapel Hill and generate discussion; and 3) provide recommendations regarding the future of mental health care services for residents of the town and county.

At 9 am, staff members move the patient by sliding him down the hallway in a chair.

At 9:27 am, the patient is wheeled down the hall by paramedics.