Lake Burien Transitional Care Facility celebrates first anniversary
One year after the Lake Burien Transitional Care Facility opened to care for youth with complex needs, the 12-bed facility is nearly full with teenagers living with intellectual/developmental delays and mental health conditions.
Just defining the resident type became one of the successes of the facility that was stood up in just 90 days last spring before it opened on July 17.
“We’re at 10 kids; I think that’s a huge success,” said Candice Pineda, Lake Burien’s executive officer. “I do also think our discharges have been successful; we had a discharge last month where the youth was here six months and was able to return to family, and that’s also huge.”
At a care location serving youth with high needs and big behaviors, the small improvements can also be big wins.
“The progress youth have made while they’re here, that’s just amazing to hear about,” said Angel Beckford, Lake Burien’s program director. “It’s hard work; it’s challenging work. When you see little steps and little wins as victories, it’s great to see. Maybe a kid who’s not so physically aggressive, or they’re using communication books, or feeling comfortable with the staff. It’s going to get a haircut in a barber shop and being able to go there safely. It’s just amazing, and we are all happy to see those.”
The average length of stay is six to seven months or longer, said Beckford. What makes this first-of-its-kind facility unique is that it offers youth short-term therapy with an emphasis on supporting their transition to permanent community placements, or back to their homes, by offering escorted outings to build skills in the community.
“As a clinical team member, just seeing that progress in terms of being able to have those activities in the community and being successful within the community has been huge for us,” said Lauren Moore, a psychiatric social worker at Lake Burien and one of the core team members to set up the program.
Offering a new kind of treatment
“The reason Lake Burien was created was because kids with IDD and kids with autism who are nonverbal usually are discriminated against in the treatment world because traditional talk therapy doesn’t work. Our program was made to relieve that barrier for treatment for youth. There’s not a lot of treatment options for these youth,” said Pineda.
Without enough community treatment options, the path for many of these youth first leads them to long stays in hospitals. As their untreated behaviors escalate in community settings, many youth are taken to emergency rooms due to safety concerns, and oftentimes they stay for days or weeks due to a lack of facilities to transfer them into.
In fact, the first youth to join Lake Burien stayed in an ER for six months before transferring to the program.
“It was definitely an unstable environment,” Moore said. “We don’t wish upon any youth to make the ER their home, but that was essentially where things were at when we connected with the first youth.”
Offering residents non-talk therapy and access to communication devices means they can get impactful treatment at Lake Burien. The program offers medication management as well.
“As a clinical pharmacist, I can see these are really difficult patients who’ve come to us, and very well-meaning prescribers end up having them on quite a few medications,” said Dr. Steve Williams, a clinical pharmacist who came out of retirement to help build the program. “We’ve been able to figure out what is needed and what is not, and the end result is fewer medications and fewer side effects.”
The team’s depth of combined experience in behavioral health and developmental disabilities settings helped them to create the program in a way uniquely aimed at fostering independence, self-advocacy and growth, with support in community skills and in family settings. The program also became certified in the National Association of Developmental Disabilities’ Dual Diagnosis Accreditation Program, which ensures staff receive industry-standard training.
“We did work together as a team, a lot of us wearing multiple different hats to help get the vision of Lake Burien created,” said Beckford. “We definitely created a bond. It’s the first (pediatric residential treatment facility) in Washington state; it’s something that all of us have done together.”
The program now partners across the government, hospitals and schools to support the residents: Rainier School provides medications, Highline Public Schools supports youth who need to transfer to local schools, and the Seattle Children’s Hospital transfers patients to the program. Lake Burien also partners with the Department of Children, Youth and Families to transfer youth to the program from hospitals or family homes.
Focusing on families
The care team also works closely with families, who need support themselves and are key to youth eventually living successfully in the community.
“I think our families have been in such crisis it almost feels like a fog for them, so when they’re here in the program being able to see those successes in the community is truly huge. We let families know we’re here to serve and really support that gap between institution and community,” said Moore.
The team lauded the work of their psychologist, Dr. Ed Morris, who partners with families by offering family therapy sessions and even visiting families’ homes to interact with families and the youth to offer targeted interventions for behaviors at home.
“Some of the great feedback we get is for our psychologist working with the families; we have really difficult behaviors and really difficult transitions, and they really appreciate the support from the clinical team,” Pineda said.
She envisions Lake Burien supporting even more youth and families in the future.
“We’re just continuing to grow and adapt our program to meet the needs of the kids we do serve,” said Pineda. She also wants to “continue to build our program to where we have more community partners that have a buy-in to this program; that way if we do have a youth who can’t return home, there’s bigger and better programs and step-downs even from our program that they can go to.”
