NYAPRS Note: Very exciting news! Recovery Options Made Easy (ROME) will be opening a highly innovative peer-led 4-tiered crisis response center in Buffalo with local and state funding that will include mental-health urgent care, renewal, short term and intensive respite components. This model will be closely watched nationally: congratulations to NYAPRS member agencies ROME, Spectrum Health & Human Services and WNY Independent Living and great thanks to funders Erie County Department of Mental Health and the NYS Office of Mental Health!
Crisis Mental Health Center Coming To Fruit Belt Neighborhood
By Tracey Drury – Buffalo Business First November 10, 2021
A new crisis center is coming to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus with a focus on mental-health services.
The Respite & Recovery Center will open at 111 Maple St. in a building owned by St. John Baptist Church. The building housed a long-term residence program operated by Hospice Buffalo until 2015.
The collaborative project is led by Recovery Options Made Easy, a $6 million Olean nonprofit and aimed at individuals experiencing mental health crisis, said Shannon Higbee, CEO of ROME.
The facility will include four programs:
-
mental-health urgent care operated with Spectrum Health & Human Services
-
mental-health renewal center in collaboration with Western New York Independent Living
-
short-term crisis respite program with 24/7, 28-day residential services; and
-
a new intensive crisis respite, also with a 28-day program with medical integration.
Higbee said the intensive respite program fills a gap between lower-level, peer-run crisis respite and higher-end programs like the hospital-based comprehensive psychiatric emergency program (CPEP) at Erie County Medical Center.
“This is a brand new model no one is running in the state yet,” she said. “We’re filling a gap in the system.”
The program came in direct response to demand from the county to help 76 high-utilizers of these services, some of whom have been treated at the ECMC program as many as 70 times since the year began, but don’t meet admissions criteria.
“It’s a massive strain on the system, but individuals aren’t getting their needs met in the way that’s most appropriate,” she said.
…Once open, many of the services to be offered are billable, which will make the center self-sustainable, Higbee said. “It’s a first-of-its-kind model, so OMH is looking pretty closely as a brand new model of crisis treatment.”