“Today may be the best day in my career, for real,” said Dwayne Butler, president and CEO of Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers.
That was on Tuesday, April 25, the first day People’s delivered client and patient services at its new, $6 million, 18,000 sq. ft. health facility for children and youth ages three to 17. The People’s Center for Children’s Health is located at 5647 Delmar Blvd., a couple of doors away from People’s main health center.
“If we profess that behavioral health is important, then we have to invest,” Butler said.
It is a bright, inviting structure that took a year to build. With medical and behavioral health workers housed together to treat children and adolescents, the center integrates behavioral and physical health. Moreover, it reduces the stigma for parents who are hesitant to bring their children into a mental health facility.
Services in the new facility include evaluation, group therapy, psychoscocial rehabilitation, creative arts therapy, and physical health metabolic screenings for blood pressure, glucose and other wellness measures.
One of the best things about the building is that it is new space – created specifically for children and their families by the professionals who serve them. Young people and their loved ones appreciate the fresh space – particularly when the former building at Prince Hall was dark, and ceiling tiles were water-damaged, broken or missing, one family said.
“It’s a step up from Prince Hall and the last building,” Angel Hampton said. “The only thing that was colorful at Prince Hall was when they would hang up art work from the students. The walls were energy-draining.”
Her mother, Regena King, is a family support worker at the children’s center.
“It feels open,” Hampton said. “I like the colors, the flooring – the shapes; I like how they have the paintings on the wall. It feels comfortable.”
And the clinical area will soon have more art on the walls by St. Louis artist Cbabi Bayok.
At the new children’s center, there are big windows that let in lots of sunshine and natural light, and the colors are bright and happy.
“Many of the children we serve have never had a new pair of shoes,” Butler said. “When we see this building, I have to remind everyone that when you get to the first floor, you think you’re in Chesterfield or Ladue, and our children deserve it.”
The patient population comes from children and youth throughout the community, including insured and uninsured families.
The center has intake and assessment, team case management and a community meeting space on the first floor. Behavioral health treatment, telehealth and physical health metabolic screenings are on the second floor. Butler said the offices and spaces on the third floor will probably be used for private adolescent health.
Teresa Brandon, executive vice president of Clinical Operations for Amanda Luckett Murphy Hopewell (the youth behavioral health component of People’s), runs programs in the new facility. It is designed to maximize the experience and to minimize interruptions of therapy and treatment. Community support workers whose jobs require them to go in and out throughout the day are located on the first floor so as not to disturb the treatment underway upstairs.
“Our second floor primarily is for provider clinic services,” Brandon said. “Then, in the middle we have the clinic and a second waiting area.”
The mini waiting areas across from the reception station have glass open walls to provide family-friendly privacy and, if needed, staff monitoring of children who are not there for treatment.
“In our community, if a mother has five kids and one with behavioral health issues, all five kids come,” Butler said. “In Chesterfield, four kids stay at home with the nanny. We had to design a building for all five kids.”
“The one area that we are excited about that we’ve never had before is our two-way mirror screen area, where we do parent-child interaction therapy,” Brandon said. It is Butler’s favorite room as well.
The two-way mirror allows staff in the room next door to observe parent-child or sibling-to-sibling interactions while the staff communicates with the parent in real time.
“We can put ear pieces in the parents and we can help the parent deal with the children and de-escalate and teach them,” Butler said. “Our parents can’t come every week, so we will teach you how to deal with things in the household. We try to get through the fog of poverty to learn how to help our children.”
The day The American visited, there was a rolling cart with sandbox of small toys in the top and other toys on another cart. Staff can change such items as needed, depending on the age of the children and other dynamics.
A dream come true
This center started six years ago as a dinnertime conversation Butler had with medical and behavioral health team members about what they would want in a facility designed for urban behavioral health. These are the people who work with children and see additional needs that families may have.
“We were dreaming, and who would have thought this would happen?” Butler asked. “I think we have done the best we could do for our babies.”
He said Amanda Luckett Murphy helped him to understand behavioral health, and he talked with U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-St. Louis), who offered to help. “First, he gave me the confidence to keep moving, and he made some phone calls to key people and we got financing,” Butler said of Clay.
The People’s Center for Children’s Health was made possible through funds from the City of St. Louis Community Development Administration, David Steward, the Steward Family Foundation, Centene Corporation, Home State Health and Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers.
The late Ida Woolfolk was a People’s board member and advocate who helped to raise funds for the new building. “Ida is the real ‘wind beneath my wings,’” Butler said. The first floor community room will be named in her honor.
For more information, visit www.phcenters.org or call 314-531-1770.
