Covenant Health Receives Grant for New Relational Health Unit
During Children’s Mental Health Acceptance Week, Covenant Children’s is pleased to announce it has been awarded a $500K grant to support its new Pediatric Relational Health Unit, currently under construction and set to open in Aug 2023.
The Pediatric Relational Health Unit is the result of multiple years of effort and the long-standing partnership between Covenant Health and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. The outpatient unit will ensure pediatric patients in West Teas and eastern New Mexico have access to mental health services.
The new unit represents a significant, multimillion-dollar, investment in the community, made possible by support from TTUHSC, the Covenant Health Foundation, and multiple donors who share Covenant’s mission of caring for the mental health of the poor and vulnerable. The Well Being Trust is a Foundation of Providence Health that is dedicated to advancing the mental, social, and spiritual health for all. Covenant Children’s funding comes as part of a larger round of behavioral health grants, totaling $4.9 million.
Dr. Sarah Mallard Wakefield, Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine states mental health is, “one of the most common issues children and families face, yet we have no children’s or adolescent inpatient unit for our area. We have no children’s or adolescent day treatment or intensive outpatient services in our region. So, if a child or family is in extreme crisis, they leave our community. And they go very far away. Hours away.”
Covenant Children’s is providing a solution to this crisis with the diverse services being offered at the new Pediatric Relational Health Unit; including two services brand new to Lubbock aimed at keeping kids as close to home as possible. These services include:
- Relocation of TTUHSC’s existing Department of Psychiatry’s children’s services,
including:
Assessments of care needed
An outpatient therapy program consisting of individual, group, medication
management, parent-child interaction therapy
- Services New to Lubbock
An Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) that provides a more intensive,
structured, outpatient services targeted towards kids not responding to traditional
outpatient services alone or that are being stepped down from a partial
hospitalization program
A Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) is a day treatment program for children
either at risk for inpatient hospitalization, are being discharged and stepped down
from psychiatric inpatient care, or need more intensive services than are
provided in the traditional outpatient setting.
Covenant Children’s CEO, Dr. Amy Thompson, adds “as the Region’s only freestanding children’s hospital, being able to provide robust services for any and all needs of patients and their families is top of mind. We’ve seen increases in pediatric behavioral health issues and having to hold these kids in our ED, or in our inpatient units, while we wait for an inpatient placement. This new unit aims to keep kids as close to home as possible by allowing many to stay and receive treatment in the IOP or PHP programs, rather than having to be hospitalized at an inpatient program – the closest of which is hours away. These new services really elevate the level of care, in a meaningful way, for our community and we can’t wait for the community to be able to benefit from it.”
About Covenant Health:
Covenant Children’s is the only independently licensed, freestanding, children’s hospital in West Texas and eastern New Mexico and is one of only eight members of the Children’s Hospital Association of Texas and is the only one in our region. As the home of compassionate care and health excellence, it is Covenant Health’s vision to create Health for a Better World. Covenant Health is home to the only free-standing children’s hospital in West Texas, the only certified stroke center, and the best hospital in the Panhandle Plains region as voted by U.S. News & World Report. For more than 100 years our pioneering spirit has been moving us forward, bringing world-class research and the most advanced treatments to West Texas and eastern New Mexico. Our connected health network of eight hospitals, and more than 6,000 caregivers allows us to provide our patients with the excellent care they deserve, with more locations, doctors, and specialists. To learn more about Covenant Health, please visit covenanthealth.org or our Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, pages.
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