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Adult foster home owners seek to dispel fears

The Record-Eagle - 5/21/2023

May 21—TRAVERSE CITY — Plans to reopen an adult foster care home in an East Bay Township neighborhood as one for people with mental health crises drew safety and zoning concerns from neighbors.

After meeting with Hope Network Behavioral Health Executive Director Deborah Mock and Leslie Wilson, the nonprofit's director of crisis services, some neighbors agreed those safety concerns had been largely put to rest.

Mock and Wilson met with a few dozen Pine Grove neighborhood residents recently at East Bay Township Hall and answered as many questions about the facility as they could.

Mock said plans are to turn a home on Indian Trail Boulevard into a six-bed crisis residential facility. It'll accept Northern Lakes Community Mental Health clients who are assessed as needing an extra level of treatment and referred to the facility. They'll typically stay at the home for five to seven days.

"People that come to crisis residential are like everyone in this room, and their main reason that they're there is because of life stressors," she told the audience. "Something has happened where they just need that little bit of extra help."

Wilson said the majority of clients — known as consumers within the mental health system — would have diagnoses like depression, anxiety or adjustment disorder in which they're struggling to adjust to major life changes such as divorce, job loss or the death of a loved one.

In Traverse City, the options for people who need inpatient care are typically limited to the emergency room or a psychiatric hospital where open beds are nearly impossible to find.

The home will be a "very dignified place" for people to get the inpatient treatment they need, including treatment groups throughout the day and time with clinicians.

No fewer than two staff members would be present around the clock, with more staff in the home during weekdays when clinicians are present, Mock said. Clinicians would be on call over the weekend.

Some neighbors had concerns about whether patients might pose a threat to residents. One woman asked if neighbors would be notified if someone who might pose a danger walked away from the facility, or if nearby residents would "wait to be murdered in our beds."

Mock and Wilson said throughout the meeting that residents would be screened twice, once by Northern Lakes Community Mental Health and again by Hope Network Behavioral Health, to ensure they would be a right fit for the crisis residential facility.

Those who pose a danger to themselves or others, including staff, would not be accepted, they said.

Northern Lakes Community Mental Health got a grant to offer the kind of services Hope Network wants to bring to the facility, Mock said. Even with that financial relationship, Hope Network would still would turn away referrals who aren't a good fit for the home.

As for clients who leave the voluntary treatment program who might pose a threat to themselves or others, facility staff would notify police — and could call a mobile crisis unit to help evaluate the situation as well, Wilson said.

"They can assess the person right at the program and, if they think it's not safe for them to be there, they will actually take them with them," Mock added later.

Healthcare privacy laws would bar facility staff from notifying individual neighbors, Wilson said.

Several neighbors referenced violent incidents involving people with mental illnesses as being behind their concerns over the facility opening near their houses, and pointed out its proximity to a neighborhood playground.

Toi Warnick said she owned Indian Trail Adult Foster Care in the same house for 29 years before selling it to the previous owners before Hope Network. She told the audience it was typical for people with mental illnesses to live at the home — a point another audience member raised in a few barbed exchanges with other neighbors during the otherwise calm meeting.

Mock said it's common for Hope Network's crisis residential facilities to raise the most concern. They're also the facilities where the nonprofit has the fewest issues.

She said later the services the facility will provide are the kind that neighborhood residents should hope are available to them if they were in need. Clients have a right to be in the neighborhood just as the homeowners do, she said.

One resident, Jean Powell, said she hoped the new facility would be a "non-event" but wanted to know what to expect. She and other neighbors, including Michelle Witkop, had questions about what kind of patients the crisis home will accept and what sort of safeguards are in place.

At least one audience member, Theresa Giorgianni, wasn't satisfied with the answers Mock and Wilson gave, she said. She was concerned that clients wouldn't necessarily be checked for criminal backgrounds, although Wilson said anyone legally barred from living next to a playground wouldn't be referred there in the first place.

Witkop and others also repeatedly said they agree there's a need for the services, but questioned if a residential neighborhood was the place for them.

East Bay zoning allows adult foster care homes of six beds or less in single-family neighborhoods, township Zoning Administrator Preston Taylor told trustees at a recent meeting. Taylor made his own inquiries after neighbors sought answers on what kind of services the facility would provide.

State law also treats adult foster care homes, including those that care for people with mental illnesses, as a residential use, township Attorney Peter Wendling said. It prevents local governments from passing rules that would keep them out of residential districts.

Afterward, Powell said she was relieved to hear how much experience Mock and Hope Network have with the kind of facility they want to run. And Witkop said she was "very comforted" by what she heard at the meeting.

"That was the goal of the meeting, was to get education as well as to talk to them about having some type of neighborhood council, and I feel like we met both of those goals," Witkop said.

Mock said afterward she thought the audience had an open mind about having the facility in their neighborhood. She also said she believed she and Wilson were able to dispel some misconceptions, and that she looked forward to taking part in that neighborhood council.

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