{"id":910719,"date":"2026-09-30T06:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T06:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910719\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T06:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T06:56:08","slug":"redmond-breaks-ground-on-youth-mental-health-facility-redmond-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/910719\/","title":{"rendered":"Redmond breaks ground on youth mental health facility | Redmond News"},"content":{"rendered":"

REDMOND, Ore. — Central Oregon families who have had to travel over the mountain for their children’s mental health care will soon have an option close to home, after officials broke ground Sept. 29 on a\u00a0sub-acute mental health residential treatment facility<\/a> in Redmond.<\/p>\n

For Deschutes County Wraparound Coordinator Melissa Lopez, the groundbreaking was more than just a ceremony.<\/p>\n

“I am also a mother who has had a child that has struggled with mental health, and this is so important for families and it’s important for our community to be able to provide the children with the care that they need,” Lopez said.<\/p>\n

Lopez said the only way children in Central Oregon can receive extensive help for mental health is through the emergency services. Oftentimes families will have to go to cities like Portland for those services.<\/p>\n

“To have to tell them that to get the services they deserve and need, they have to travel three-plus hours over the mountain to accomplish that. It is very difficult to tell a parent,” Lopez said.<\/p>\n

For parents and families, their children are sometimes discharged while still suffering.<\/p>\n

“We also made a trip to the emergency room that, while they did their best, maybe didn’t give us the level of care that we needed at the time. And we were sent home,” Lopez said.<\/p>\n

When she had enough, Lopez brought the issue up to state representatives, and they listened. Reps. Emerson Levy and Jason Kropf, D-Bend, and Ben Bowman, D-Tigard, showed up.<\/p>\n

“It was really great to hear them today come to me and say it was two years ago when you spoke to us. You spoke to us and you got us good,” Lopez said.<\/p>\n

The new facility will not only give children ages 12 through 17 extensive care and access to crisis beds, medication and therapy, but also life skills training and academic support, making it the first facility in the region to do so.<\/p>\n

“This brings that care close to home, and they’ll be able to get that care seamlessly is the hope,” St. Charles senior behavioral health director Molly Wells Darling said.<\/p>\n

Approved by the City of Redmond and Deschutes County, the facility will be publicly and privately funded through county health services, St. Charles, Oregon Health Authority, Oregon Department of Administrative Services Lottery revenue and the developer, Headwaters, which has a similar facility in Idaho.<\/p>\n

While it wasn’t around when Lopez’s family needed it, she knows it’s a light for parents whose families are also navigating through dark times.<\/p>\n

“I wish it were around back then, but I’m just super proud. Proud of the work that we’ve done as a community. And I’m just proud to be a part of this,” Lopez said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"REDMOND, Ore. — Central Oregon families who have had to travel over the mountain for their children’s mental…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64,63,45997,137,322,514,515,44,478604],"class_list":["post-910719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-email","tag-health","tag-local","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-news","tag-redmond"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}