With colorful walls, communal spaces and unfinished oak bunk beds, the nearly completed Manatee Palms Group Homes have the feel of a college dormitory. They look like a home away from home. That’s no accident, according to Chief Operating Officer Timothy R. Macsuga. It’s how children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders who will be treated there best receive the therapy and care they require.
“The trick is to make the most safe environment possible without it feeling like anything other than a home,” Macsuga said Wednesday while leading a tour of the facilities at 1324 37th Ave. E. “Many times, the treatment and care of a child is just as much about the environment of care as it is about the child themselves.”
Manatee Palms Youth Services, which operates a licensed psychiatric hospital for children on 51st Street West, is renovating a 3,800-square-foot building that until August 2009 was home to Manatee Adolescent Treatment Services. The facility will house five, 12-bed group homes for children ages 5 to 17 under one roof. The 13-acre campus also includes a ropes course, an outdoor swimming pool, an indoor gymnasium, an outdoor basketball court and softball field.
The children are referred to Manatee Palms by parents, guardians or state agencies. Macsuga stressed that children who live at the group homes are those deemed unlikely to present an imminent danger to others or themselves. The group homes offer children a step-down option between a psychiatric hospital and their homes. “These are kids with problems that need some time to stabilize,” Macsuga said. “That’s what this is really about.”
Manatee Palms is one of 14 licensed psychiatric hospitals in the state, Macsuga said. He said the Department of Children and Families identified a need for specialized therapeutic group homes across the state. The closest such facility to Manatee County is Tampa Bay Academy.
The first two of the group homes are nearly ready for adolescent residents, boys and girls ages 13 to 17 in separate homes. The boys home’s walls are blue, the girls home’s walls lavender. A staff of 38 will serve the first two homes.
Manatee Palms is making final preparations to secure fire marshal approval and Agency for Health Care Administration accreditation before opening the first two homes. The renovation of the building cost more than $1 million, Macsuga said. A.D. Morgan Corp., which has an office in Bradenton, was the construction manager.
Timothy R. Wolfrum
29 April 2010
http://www.bradenton.com/2010/04/29/2243945/group-homes-offer-healing-environment.html
