This past June, St. David’s Foundation continued its investment in the Judge Guy Herman Center for Mental Health Crisis care, awarding Integral Care $1,053,895 over 18 months to support operations at the facility. The Herman Center provides short-term emergency psychiatric crisis care that includes stabilization, assessment, and treatment in a secure, protected residential environment for adults experiencing mental health crises. Treatment at the Herman Center offers the right level of care at the right time while simultaneously reducing the cost of care and improving health outcomes for patients. Upon admittance, all patients receive care in a trauma-informed setting with the oversight of a psychiatrist. During a short-term stay, clients have access to services including crisis assessment, crisis stabilization and extended observation, medications, individual and group therapy, peer services, nursing services, case management, discharge planning, and linkage to ongoing care and additional community resources.

In addition to delivering more appropriate care for clients, the Herman Center also helps to reduce strain on local law enforcement and emergency departments. The Herman Center provides an alternative to incarceration and an additional destination for both involuntary and voluntary individuals who may otherwise be discharged to the community or sent to inpatient care. Our efficient admission process ensures that officers can quickly return to duty, consistently returning officers to the field on average within 11 minutes and 27 seconds of arrival.

Since its opening, the Herman Center has become a highly sought-after service provision, with clients reporting high levels of satisfaction with our services. Over the next two years, the Herman Center team will utilize in-house intakes to connect clients to ongoing Integral Care services and ensure continuity of care through linkage with their current treatment providers. We will achieve this through focused connection and warm handoffs to better the chances of client’s tenure in the community after discharge. We will also enhance programming by providing varied, robust group options through integration of additional treatment modalities such as Screening Brief Intervention Referral and Treatment for substance use disorders and Motivational Interviewing.

The Herman Center aims to serve 1,000 individuals per year. During the grant period, Integral Care’s goals include maintaining short drop-off intervals for law enforcement, connecting clients to follow-up services after discharge, and helping clients enroll in Medical Access Program coverage.