‘WHAT PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF’
Hampton-Newport News Community Service Board adjusts to social distancing
For the scores of people who came every day, the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board’s day treatment program was a vital part of coping with mental illness — but it was also impossible to maintain with the state orders barring groups of more than 10 people. So Anne Whitaker, the board’s adult outpatient services director, scrambled to set up daily phone calls from her psycho-social services staff to program participants.
When she learned that a dozen participants didn’t have phones, she went out and bought some to be sure she could stay in touch.
When one participant earlier this week reported running out of toilet paper, a staff member delivered some. Whitaker is working on arranging a remote video version of the group sessions, which are such an important part of mental health therapy for many deeply distressed individuals.
The community mental health programs the board provides are a high-touch service — but that’s harder to do when people need to keep their distance.
And so far, even as the board works to keep in close contact with the vulnerable people who rely on its staff, none of them, and none of its staff, have contracted the virus.
The board is still very much open for business, said Executive Director Natale Ward Christian.
“We provide a life-saving service,” she said. The staff members who respond to emergency calls, 24 hours a day, still do so, though Crisis Services Director Ryan Dudley has been setting up video connections with police stations, jails and hospitals so he and his team can remotely complete the assessments that determine whether an individual needs hospitalization.
The board’s Crisis Stabilization Unit — a place where people in crisis can stay for short periods while psychiatrists, nurses and therapists sort out the right mix of medication and support needed — is putting one person at a time in its normally double-occupancy rooms. So far, that’s been enough.
The 15 men and women with developmental disabilities — many of whom are unable to communicate and need wheelchairs to move around — in the board’s three intermediate care facilities still have in-house nurses to care for them.
Staff at the board’s 11 group homes for people with developmental disabilities are there every day — after taking their temperatures to be sure they’re not showing any symptoms of the virus. The board’s residential program for pregnant women recovering from addiction is still admitting mothers-to-be.
Meanwhile, calls for help are up — both on the hotline Dudley and his team monitor — and for the same-day assessment services that Virginia’s new STEP-VA initiative requires.
On the other hand, coronavirus worries don’t seem to be generating additional anxiety or depression for some of the most distressed people the board serves — the individuals who the board’s assertive community treatment team visit at least once a day, said Bob Deisch, the board’s adult care coordination director.
The team is handling some of those face-to-face contacts by phone, but for many, a team member still needs to stop by to make sure they are taking their medication, eating and not spinning off into crisis.
When the team learned the boyfriend of one woman had the virus, they hurried her to a facility to get a test, driving her in a van to maintain the 6-foot separation the Centers for Disease Control suggests.
While waiting for test results — they were negative — the woman ran out of medications. A team member delivered them, setting them on the woman’s doorstep and watching to make sure she picked them up.
There are some things the team has cut out. It will still take its clients to the supermarket or doctor’s office, though they have to sit in the back of the van.
But for now, there are no more trips to the park or mall — the kind of modest excursions that can help an extremely troubled person begin to reconnect with others.
“The quality of what we do is missing — it isn’t the ideal,” Christian said.
And she’s worried about longer term effects.
Cutbacks in services mean a cut in payments for services from the state. The board has had to furlough 50 employees and laid off 65 because a school-based therapy program is shut down and won’t reopen, Christian said.
She wants to be sure all the board staff come back — but in times of tight money, that’s not certain.
“Crisis shows you who people are and what they are capable of … with our