OHA Director Patrick Allen on June 7 issued a directive to the OHA behavioral health program and Oregon State Hospital to create more capacity in the hospital for defendants who are found unable to aid and assist in their own defense. During the past year, Oregon has experienced an unprecedented increase in people who have been charged with a crime – often nonviolent misdemeanors – being sent to the hospital for restoration treatment. However, due to the full capacity at the hospital, many are awaiting beds in local jails.

OHA is working aggressively to increase hospital capacity and strengthen community resources:

• OHA is exploring the possibility of creating transitional community capacity for aid-and-assist populations who no longer need hospital-level care, through partnership with the Northwest Regional Reentry Center.
• OSH is shifting 26 beds previously dedicated to the Civil population to serve people under Aid and Assist orders. In addition, OSH’s Junction City campus is opening 26 more beds, 10 hospital-level of care and 16 at the residential treatment facility level – to serve people who have been civilly committed.
• OHA leadership is working directly with several counties to increase community restoration services.
• Director Allen has charged a cross-divisional team with finding placements for patients under Aid and Assist orders who no longer need hospital-level care so they can continue receiving services in the community.
• Senate Bill 24, which limits the types of individuals who can be sent to the hospital and encourages courts to consider community restoration more often, passed the 2019 Legislature.

By Steve Allen, OHA Behavioral Health director

I need to talk to you about an urgent matter.

Recent news coverage has highlighted children in Oregon’s foster care system being placed out of state, in large part due to the lack of services available in Oregon that meet their complex behavioral health needs.

Thanks to the leadership and dedication of Governor Kate Brown and our legislators, as well as interagency and external partnerships, we are doing everything we can to correct this.

Governor Brown took swift action to address the issues in the child welfare system and convened the key players, including the Oregon Health Authority, to strategize on how we can bring our young people back to Oregon and better meet their needs in the future. I am also heartened that both Governor Brown and the Legislature delivered on significant investments in the children’s mental health system in the 2019 session, including:

• Intensive in-home services (OHA and DHS funds) – $25 million.
• Crisis and transition services – $3 million.
• School-based mental health and youth suicide prevention – $10 million.

These investments are all aimed at equipping families and communities with the tools and resources to safely care for children and youth at home, while avoiding crises that require acute intervention.

However, it is also clear that we need more capacity at higher levels of care, in particular psychiatric residential treatment facilities. To meet this immediate need, we are working with providers to help them increase their capacity. We also plan to post a Request for Information to more formally seek ideas on expanding needed capacity.

We are collectively attacking this issue from all possible angles. The success of this work will depend on continued partnerships with the Department of Human Services, providers, the Governor’s Office, legislators and coordinated care organizations. I look forward to sharing more as we make progress.