Eden Hendrick, director of the Department of Juvenile Justice, speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony Monday, Sept. 16, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — A new psychiatric treatment center is meant to help incarcerated youth with mental health issues, officials said Monday.
The $23 million treatment center is expected to open in November 2026 for teens with mental health issues who are housed at a state detention center, officials said.
“Hard work and tenacity paid off, and soon, we’re going to have a new tool at the state’s disposal to help those children — those who need it most,” said Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington.
About four years ago, advocates and agency heads told Shealy they didn’t have the resources to care for “some of our sickest children,” Shealy said. Private treatment centers took some teenagers with serious mental and behavioral health concerns, but they couldn’t take everyone, she said.
“Many providers would turn them away because they presented too much of a challenge for them,” Shealy said.
Since then, legislators and agency heads have been working to build their own facility. The budget that began in July 2022 included $20 million for DJJ to get started. Since then, officials have been touring sites and making plans for the building, said Amanda Whittle, who leads the Department of Children’s Advocacy.
The William R. Byars Jr. Treatment Center will hold up to 24 children, with space to expand to 32 if needed. Located across the street from another psychiatric hospital, it will be about a 20-minute drive from DJJ’s Broad River Road Complex.
That will keep the center close to both the juvenile justice and mental health departments. The 50,000-square-foot building will have high ceilings, as well as fences and unscalable walls, Whittle said.
It is named for the late Bill Byars, a longtime family court judge before he led DJJ for eight years during Gov. Mark Sanford’s tenure. Byars, who died in 2019, was credited with turning around an agency under federal court orders due to overcrowding and abuse. However, the agency’s progress backslid following Great Recession-era budget cuts and Byars’ departure in 2011. The latest federal lawsuit is ongoing.
Correct Care of South Carolina, a local branch of a national company that provides behavioral health services, will run the treatment center. The same group has run the state’s Sexually Violent Predator Treatment Program since 2016, according to its website.
The facility will fill a gap for children who do not need psychiatric hospitalization but who can not get effective treatment at DJJ’s detention center.
For years, the detention center has been overcrowded and understaffed, making it a difficult place for children to recover from mental health issues. And the department doesn’t have the resources it needs for serious cases of mental illness, said Director Eden Hendrick, who took the agency’s helm in 2021 after legislators pushed for the ouster of her predecessor.
“We do the best we can, but these youth need something more,” Hendrick said.
Children who go untreated before their release are more likely to have trouble later in life, including the possibility of reoffending and ending up in prison, Whittle said.
The treatment center “is designed to improve outcomes for youth by setting them on a path to recovery that promotes a healthy, productive, law-abiding future,” Whittle said.
Ideally, teenagers would have access to mental health resources before getting in trouble with the law, said Robby Kerr, director of the state Department of Health and Human Services.
As many as 70% of youth in juvenile detention centers have a diagnosable mental health problem, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Having resources available where teenagers live could keep them from ending up in DJJ’s custody, Kerr said.
The department has been working on efforts to that effect in recent years, including doubling the number of mental health counselors in schools. But the state’s health and justice departments need to do more, he said.
“We’ve got to do community care to keep them out of that justice-involved situation,” Kerr said. “I hope we don’t stop here. I’m looking forward to greater things to come.”