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KENDALLVILLE — The Northeastern Center’s Child and Adolescent Residential facility about two miles east of Kendallville opened in October 1998 with grand expectations and plans for further expansion.
But Tuesday morning center administrators announced the closing of the 10-bed, two-story facility on DeKalb County C.R. 22, just east of the Noble-DeKalb county line.
“Effective immediately, the facility will stop accepting new placements,” Michael Steigmeyer, the center’s marketing coordinator, stated in an e-mail. The program will continue to operate until appropriate placement is secured for each current resident.
“We’re working with the families of the four boys residing in the facility to either locate them in another adolescent facility or return them to their families,” said Steigmeyer. The Northeastern Center’s child and adolescent facility is the only one of its kind in Noble, LaGrange, DeKalb and Steuben counties.
Nine staff will lose their jobs. They will be offered positions within the agency as jobs become available, said Steigmeyer.
The center opened the facility because workers in the divisions of children and family services in Noble, LaGrange, DeKalb and Steuben counties saw a need for a more local child and adolescent residential facility and asked the Northeastern Center to look into the possibility of establishing one. Prior to the center’s facility, adolescents removed from homes for their own safety by the division of child and family services in the four counties and ordered by judges to receive care and treatment in a residential facility were placed in adolescent residential facilities throughout the state and in other states.
The Child and Adolescent Residential facility was not a juvenile detention center for boys with serious behavior problems, according to Steigmeyer. After families resolved their problems, children could return home. The boys who temporarily resided in the facility over the years typically had difficulty with social and school functions.
Several factors led to the decision to shut down the facility — including the current economic climate, impending Medicaid funding changes and the census at the home, according to Steigmeyer. The facility has lost money since it opened but the center has transferred revenue from other sources to cover the deficit and keep it going.
“Those revenue sources can no longer cover it,” said Steigmeyer.
The facility has not had the occupation rate over the years to support itself.
The center began accepting referrals from parents to the facility but parents couldn’t financially support it, and expected Medicaid funding changes will reduce the revenue stream.
Willem ade Villiers, the center’s director of child and adolescent services at the time of the facility’s opening, pitched the proposal to the center’s board of directors who approved the project. He is no longer with the Northeastern Center.
Authorities believed a facility was needed closer to the families and homes of the children and adolescents, de Villiers told board members. The Northeastern Center issued a bond, acquired the 64-acre site and constructed the first home for boys 6-18. Plans called for a second home for adolescent girls and a multipurpose building to house the center’s Vision Quest day treatment program for children and adolescents. The site has a 4-1/2 acre lake and center personnel talked about developing athletic fields and gardens. Those plans were never realized.
Boys referred to the facility were cared for by trained staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The home includes a basement laundry, family room and two meeting rooms. The first floor has an open kitchen area, a combination great room and dining room and bedrooms for 10 residents. A supervising couple lived on the second floor.
The building will be “mothballed,” not sold. “We’re very saddened about this,” said Steigmeyer. “We hope there’s a bright spot in the future to reopen it.”
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