FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FORT MYERS, Fla. (July 19, 2000) – Lee County Government has donated a car and appropriated $70,140 of funds to Ruth Cooper Center to address increased demand for transporting mental health patients due to the closing of Charter Glade Hospital.
The Board of County Commissioners approved the funding July 18 and the donation of the car July 11. The funding, from the Human Services Department’s current budget, will provide funding of mental health transportation needs for six months (from August 1, 2000 to January 31, 2001).
In the meantime, the county is requesting the Florida Department of Children and Families sufficiently fund its state-mandated mental health services in Lee County (see attached letter to DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney).
On June 15, Charter Glade – the only in-patient psychiatric service provider in the county – closed. Charter provided children and adult crisis stabilization services, psychiatric services for the elderly, and was an addiction receiving facility for children. The Ruth Cooper Center now is the only designated receiving facility in Lee County and is required to receive all mental health patients admitted under Florida’s Baker Act.
Ruth Cooper is licensed for 26 adult crisis beds and has experienced a 37 percent increase in admissions. Since the closure of Charter Glade, Ruth Cooper is usually at capacity and is required to transport Lee County residents to out-of-county facilities. Historically, Ruth Cooper transported one resident a month to out-of-county facilities for services. Between June 8 and June 30, Ruth Cooper transported 22 residents, including three children, to facilities outside of Lee County.
Because Ruth Cooper cannot sustain the additional financial burden of the out-of-county transportation, Lee County has boosted short-term funding. Of concern is that without county assistance, residents in need of crisis stabilization either will be placed in jail, taken to emergency rooms, retained in nursing homes, or returned to their homes or the streets.
The county car donated to help
with this problem is a surplus 1991 vehicle that has been retrofitted to provide
safe transportation for patients to treatment centers outside Lee County.