This article by Jennifer Glatz and Keith McGilvery appeared on FOX61.com.
The Paradis family in West Hartford knows what it’s like to have a child in crisis, and they want to share their story in hopes of helping others who are looking for answers to get help for their young ones.
There’s a lot Michelle and Lisa Paradis love about their daughter.
“She is absolutely so funny,” Michelle said. “I mean, some of the things she will say, I will be, like, “Where did that come from?'”
“If there is something that she feels strongly that she wants to do, she is going to find a way to do it,” Lisa explained.
But sometimes, that energy can be a big problem. Their daughter can struggle with intellectual challenges, processing information, and regulating her emotions. Lisa and Michelle said that a canceled play date to go sledding or a bike ride that gets called off because of rain could be disastrous for their 10-year-old.
One of those situations brought the family to the emergency room this past September. Lisa said it’s scary to bring a child you love to the emergency room for such a thing.
“Her needs were not met immediately. There was a lot of sitting and waiting. Unknown,” Lisa explained. “We did not know what was happening. We did not know what the next step was.”
Lisa said that as a mom, standing in an overcrowded emergency room with that unknown factor, she just “wanted to cry.”
“Because you know this is not the best place for a child. I came out crying. We had to leave her there overnight,” Lisa said.
The emergency department at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is often packed with children in crisis. The center said that of the 3,200 children who show up over a year, more than a thousand could have been candidates for behavioral health care.
Department of Children and Families (DCF) Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lilly said the department’s families are faced with violent, disruptive situations and don’t know what to do about it.
She wants more families to know about the Urgent Crisis Center, UCC, at The Village in Hartford.
“The emergency rooms are really suffering right now,” Hill-Lilly said. “They’re overcrowded, and we have this resource, so we have to get the word out and anyone can refer here. This is a gem. This is a gem of a service.
The UCC located at The Village is one of multiple across the state. They are professionally staffed to help children and teens with urgent mental or behavioral crises, including out-of-control behavior, thoughts of suicide or self-injury, feelings of depression, anxiety or hopelessness, or substance misuse.
“We see kids that are disruptive, they are breaking furniture, they are fighting, they are all those kinds of things,” Hill-Lilly said. “They are not doing well in school; they are having trouble concentrating in school – it’s behavior out of the parents’ control.”
The UCCs see more than 50 families a day. DCF said the state has the capacity to more than double that, and it is trying to redirect families like the Paradis’ from the emergency room.
The UCCs are currently funded with about $8 million from grand and programs like Medicaid. Hill-Lilly said Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget has another $7 million to see the effort grow.
As of the time of this story, The Village said it’s helped 400 families avoid the emergency room.
“I measure success first of all [to be] avoiding the emergency room, really being able to deescalate the child’s behavior, and empower parents to be able to interact with their children and help them in a time when they need it,” Hill-Lilly explained.
Michelle said they left the UCC with referrals they never got anywhere else.
“We were able to get into programs; we were able to get into other therapies that we wouldn’t have known about if it hadn’t been referred from the UCC,” Michelle said.
The help from the UCC has been life-changing for the Paradis family.
“She leaves here happy,” Lisa said. “She leaves here feeling confident and good, feeling good about herself. You’re not going to get that in an ER.”
Lisa and Michelle want other families to know that impactful help is just a car ride away.
“I think any parent just wants their child to be happy, and really that’s our goal. We want her to feel good about herself. We want her to be happy. We want her to do the best that she is able to do.
Lisa and Michelle’s daughter has not needed to go to the emergency room for five months.
DCF said 97% of the families who visit one of the UCCs are able to go home and do well after they leave the center.