By Tim Mastro

WILMINGTON — With more Delaware youth in need of mental health services, the Department of Services for Children, Youth and their Families is increasing its number of available crisis beds.

DSCYF’s Terry Children’s Center currently holds a total of 16 beds — six of which are crisis beds while 10 are residential beds for children age 12 and younger.

But when DSCYF renovates and remodels Wharton Hall on its Wilmington campus, that number will flip-flop, said DSCYF secretary Josette Manning. Plans for the new center, announced on Tuesday, include 10 crisis beds and six residential beds.

DSCYF will then leave Terry Children’s Center when the new Wharton Hall is finished.

“Terry Children’s Center, it’s a very old building, it’s not very trauma-informed. The staff there do amazing, wonderful things, but it’s just not a great place,” Ms. Manning said. “Once this (Wharton Hall) is finished, we are going to flip it so that we have 10 crisis beds, because we’ve determined that that’s really what we need more of.”

Ms. Manning said the 10 residential beds for children 12 and under only served nine individuals last year, which is why those resources are being directed toward crisis beds. She said DSCYF projects serving approximately 100 youth a year in the new Wharton Hall and there is the potential to add more beds to the facility in the future.

Renovations for Wharton Hall were announced Tuesday by DSCYF, Gov. John Carney and Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long. The facility will receive a $16 million investment from American Rescue Plan Act funds, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021.

The new Wharton Hall will also feature a trauma-informed behavioral health diagnostic center which Ms. Manning said will be the first of its kind in Delaware. She said this model will help provide better services to youth and adolescents while keeping them closer to their homes and their communities.

“Basically a youth will come in and we will do a deep dive on their background and their history,” Ms Manning said. “Sometimes when kids are having to be moved quickly from, say, a foster home or from another psychiatric placement, there’s not an opportunity to really investigate what’s at the heart of some of their issues. So they stack up diagnoses, they stack up medications and they just kind of go from one place to the other. This will enable us to sort of hit the pause button and really take a deep dive on these kids and figure out what do they need.”

Crisis beds serve to stabilize children before they are referred to a long-term care facility, such as a psychiatric hospital, Ms. Manning said. They are used when youths are experiencing significant trauma or disruptions at home.

“A child could escalate to a point where they become unmanageable because of their behavioral health issue, but not to the point that they’re suicidal, and they need to not be in their home for a little while,” Ms. Manning said. “So they would go into a crisis bed. We will try to stabilize the situation and evaluate that child’s needs. Then hopefully the situation at home has stabilized and we can work with a community provider to transition that child back home or back to the community.”

Delaware has seen an increase in the number of children presenting to hospital emergency departments with behavioral health concerns over the last few years, according to DSCYF.

Ms. Manning said recent statistics have shown one in three high school students are reporting they feel persistently sad and hopeless. She added there was a 51% increase between 2019-2021 in the number of emergency room visits for girls after a suicide attempt while boys’ emergency room visits after a suicide attempt went up 4% during the same time frame.

DSCYF also operates Silver Lake Consortium in Middletown, a residential rehab for adolescents ages 12 and up. Ms. Manning said that facility will remain the same.

The agency is also looking to add some crisis beds downstate. Ms. Manning said it has a request for proposal to have six beds in either Kent County or Sussex County.

“We’ve identified that there is a need to have them downstate,” Ms. Manning said. “Unfortunately, it is one of those things where it’s needed. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. Hopefully we can get that RFP through and we can get a provider to start providing that level of care.”

DSCYF also has its 24/7 Mobile Response Stabilization Services hotline for children in crisis throughout Delaware which can be reached at 800-969-HELP.