A center that helps residents safely come down from drugs and alcohol has been open for six months now. Officials say visitor numbers look promising, but there is still improvement to be made.
The facility opened in August of last year and has since served hundreds of people per month who are looking for help with substance issues.
Most people who have used the center have visited to recover from methamphetamine and alcohol use. But another goal of the center extends beyond checking in.
“Really the point of the sobering center is to get people from their addiction to actually going into care of some kind for their addiction or their mental health issues,” said Scott Kennelly, director of the Butte County Department of Behavioral Health.
Patients can be sent to shelters, hospitals or mental health facilities to continue treatment, or decline further treatment altogether.
During the month of January, 267 people used the sobering center. It’s a higher number of visits than previous months.
“December was 207 people. And then the month before, it was lower and lower and lower,” Kennelly said. “As word’s getting out, we're getting more and more people coming in for services.”
One of the key objectives of the sobering center was to help shorten call times for law enforcement when incidents involve intoxication or substance use. That’s because it takes up to an hour to book someone in jail while a drop off at the sobering center takes around seven minutes, according to a press release from Horizon Treatment Services, which is the company contracted to help run the center alongside the county.
Law enforcement leaders supported the creation of the center, but now that it’s open, Kennelly said more trust building is still needed.
He hopes to encourage law enforcement to refer arrestees to the sobering center instead of jail.
“That's one of the numbers that we don't have high referral numbers for. They're coming up, but they're not as high as I would have expected yet,” Kennelly said.
More than 90% of visits were walk-ins in January, while law enforcement referrals made up about 4% of visits.
“We're six months into the development of the program,” Kennelly said. “Talk to me in a year. I would see much higher numbers, I think, from law enforcement than we have now.”
