Prestera expanding with crisis residential unit

Prestera Center has been leading the way in community-based comprehensive behavioral healthcare services since 1967 - for the past 51 years! Each year, 20,000 individuals, children and families across nine counties in West Virginia receive compassionate care to achieve their full potential from 800 staff.

A full-range of services is offered to adults with behavioral/emotional health problems, substance abuse problems, children's mental health issues and intellectual/developmental disabilities, including personal care, group homes, homeless services, supported employment, supported housing, special programs and permanent housing.

Prestera Center is opening a new 16-bed crisis residential unit in the historic Guyandotte section of Huntington in the next few weeks.

Crisis units in Huntington and Logan, West Virginia, provide medically managed psychiatric stabilization and treatment services over an average length of stay of five to seven days.

Crisis units quickly stabilize mental health crises and/or provide safe medically-managed detoxification services for adults with substance use disorders.

Crisis units are staffed with registered nurses; psychiatrists who see every person every day; therapists who provide evaluation, therapy and discharge planning; and trained support staff around the clock. The new crisis unit will replace an eight-bed unit currently located in Huntington.

The Center is proud to provide effective services to our youth. School-based mental health services are provided to students in Cabell, Wayne, Lincoln, Kanawha and Boone counties.

Mental health services are also provided in the homes of many youth through our in-home services through an approach called wraparound that has been shown to be effective.

This approach addresses not only the behavioral health needs of the youth, but assists the family to meet needs that impact the health, well-being and permanence of their children. This approach is the keystone of a $3 million five-year Regional Partnership Grant awarded by the Children's Bureau, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, of the Administration of Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide comprehensive services to work with children and their families who are involved with the Child Welfare System because of parental substance use. Partners include WVDHHR, Children's Home Society, Marshall University/Marshall Health and the Western Regional Day Report Center.

As the opioid epidemic rages, Prestera Center has worked with local partners to secure multiple federal grants to provide funding for unique and creative programs.

The Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion or LEAD projects are a partnership with law enforcement designed to get individuals who have committed low level crimes into treatment and reduce criminal recidivism.

The Huntington and Charleston WV LEAD projects are so successful that Prestera is assisting other areas throughout WV to implement LEAD projects.

The Center is also a partner in Huntington's innovative Quick Response Team (QRT) initiative, which visits individuals who have overdosed in an attempt to engage them into accepting treatment and recovery services.

This initiative has been successful in other states, and early data for this initiative is very positive. Prestera is actively engaged in expansion of the QRT effort into Charleston.

Offender rehabilitation has better outcomes than incarceration and punishment alone.

Offender re-entry programs have been started at the Western Regional Jail and at the W.Va. Department of Corrections. These programs ensure that treatment and aftercare for mental health and substance use disorders is provided for individuals being released from incarceration.

Prestera also continues to offer a full complement of other effective substance use disorder services, including outpatient, intensive outpatient, detox, short-term and long-term residential treatment, DUI offender education, medication-assisted treatment, co-occurring and trauma treatment, community housing, recovery coaching and sober living permanent housing.

Prestera Center rises in response to needs identified in our community. Its success is a result of critical and valuable partnerships and support from individuals, local businesses and organizations, local governments, state government, grants and the community at large.

Prestera Center continues to provide services regardless of ability to pay and also accepts most insurance plans. Keeping any business open for 51 years is challenging, but especially so for a nonprofit organization.

Fundraising is more important than ever before, and we are thankful for our community's generosity.

One thing is sure as we look toward the next 50 years: Prestera Center will be here, in our communities, leading the way with high quality behavioral health services for everyone. For more information, visit www.prestera.org.

Kim Miller is director of corporate development at Prestera Center.