Liitfik Wellness Center to open soon
Answering the urgent need for a facility to help people get on a path of wellness and sobriety, Norton Sound Health Corporation’s new Liitfik Wellness Center is set to open on May 17.
The new building has seen many conceptual iterations since the idea of building a small sobering center in Nome took hold in 2011. “As more planning went into it, we realized the need for additional substance use treatment services,” said Behavioral Health Administrative Director Lance Johnson. “With support from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority, we were able to hire and sustain a planner for a new, bigger facility.” According to NSHC’s website, alcohol abuse is one of the biggest problems in the region and the current solution to take intoxicated people to the hospitals’ emergency room is costly and does nothing to solve the problem.
The Liitfik Center aims to offer more resources and options to battle substance abuse. Pilings for the building were pounded into the ground in 2019, construction went forward as scheduled – despite the pandemic – and in a few weeks, the doors to the two-story, 24,000-sqft building will open.
Costs were initially pegged at $14 million, but updated numbers were not available. Johnson said NSHC shouldered about 85 percent of the cost, the Mental Health Trust, the Denali Commission and NSEDC shared the remainder of the funding.
NSHC’s Behavioral Health Services will occupy the ground level of the building with offices, a separated tract for the Sobering Center and the Day Shelter, a large group room that can be divided into four smaller rooms, a large kitchen, laundry and shower facilities. The tribal healer program is also located at ground level. Upstairs, the building will house the Health Aide Training center, Emergency Medical Services offices, the CAMP and WIC programs.
Johnson said the new facility allows BHS to have additional levels of services, although it still won’t be an inpatient facility. In addition to outpatient and intensive outpatient services, BHS will be able to offer so-called partial hospitalization services, which he describes as an intensive, more than 20-hour per week program that includes group therapy, individual therapy, skills development, life, coping and resiliency development, counseling and traditional activities, and other services. The large kitchen, sewing and carving room were designed to assist in healing through traditional activities.
A significant feature of the new expanded facility is a sobering center, where people can stay overnight in a “non-medical detox unit,” said Johnson. The sobering center can accommodate up to 12 people. In the morning, the sobering center space is then converted into the Day Shelter. “We decided to move the Day Shelter there as it is largely the similar audience that utilizes the services we offer,” said Johnson. Also, he said, at the Liitfik Center, there are showers and a laundry facility, something that the Mini Convention Center on River Street, where the Day Shelter is currently operating, has not.
While they are still developing a protocol of how the intake works, Johnson said that people who are picked up an ambulance still go to the ER for medical evaluation.
Johnson said the purpose of the Liitfik Center, literally meaning ‘a place of healing’, is to provide different levels of care and create a continuum of care.