Members of the Idaho Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee and their staff tour Southwest Idaho Treatment Center in Nampa on Nov. 20, 2024. (Clark Corbin/Idaho Capital Sun)
Several Idaho legislators began pushing for state officials to prioritize treating more Idahoans with developmental or intellectual disabilities in residential treatment facilities instead of hospitalizing them after the budget committee toured the Southwest Idaho Treatment Center on Wednesday.
Located in Nampa, the Southwest Idaho Treatment Center is a residential treatment facility for individuals with developmental or intellectual disabilities. The center is serving 18 clients, including one minor. Southwest Idaho Treatment Center clients have complex therapeutic needs that could not be met in the community, or who have been placed in the custody of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare by the courts, staff told legislators. SWITC clients may be a danger to themselves or others, staff said.
The Southwest Idaho Treatment Center was the subject of a critical 2019 Idaho Office of Performance Evaluations report after findings of abuse and neglect were documented, a client died by suicide and the facility failed inspections. But staff at the Southwest Idaho Treatment Center told legislators they bought into the recommendations from the 2019 report, made staffing changes, changed the culture and have had three consecutive years of successful survey and audit findings.
After hearing that some Idahoans with disabilities had been physically restrained at hospitals for weeks or even months before being admitted to a treatment center like SWITC, Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, asked Idaho Department of Health and Welfare officials if they could hire more staff and traveling nurses to treat people at treatment centers, not hospitals. Cook said it would be less expensive than round-the-clock hospitalization, and patients could have better outcomes receiving therapy and supervision than being physically restrained to a hospital bed because there was nowhere else to send people.
The Southwest Idaho Treatment Center is already undergoing improvements, as crews will soon break ground on constructing residential duplex units for residents at the facility that are designed to be more similar to a traditional apartment than an institution – with the goal of helping residents receive treatment and then return to the community, said Cameron Gilliland, a deputy division administrator with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Gilliland said the amount of clients SWITC can serve is affected by staffing limitations and safety concerns for staff and residents alike – since SWITC is not a secure facility like a prison.
“There are still some questions I would like to get answers to about where the money is going and why,” Cook said. “It’s been great (on the SWITC tour) to be able to talk to them face-to-face.”
Idaho Legislature‘s budget committee visited several state facilities to see the impact of budget decisions
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, or JFAC, is a powerful legislative committee that sets the budget for all state agencies and departments. Although the Idaho Legislature is not in session, JFAC’s fall interim meetings are designed to help legislators serving on the committee gear up to start setting the fiscal year 2026 budget.
“It gives me a head start to look at the budgets,” Cook said. “Now I’ll already know kind of what’s going on, because that is a huge amount of work, and so be able to get a little bit of a head start – I’m excited about what I’ve seen and it gives me some ideas where I need to dig a little bit deeper and get ready for our session.”
Cook said the ability to tour state facilities, meet with staff and clients and ask questions helps him really understand the impact of budget decisions.
“I love to see where the money’s going and seeing how it’s spent,” Cook said in an interview Wednesday. “I guess I’m kind of a visual person. I like to see what my money has been going through.”
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee wraps up its fall interim meetings Thursday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise and the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine in Meridian. Thursday’s agenda includes a presentation of the Idaho Office of Performance Evaluations’ report on the Luma system that has been blamed for reporting and reconciliation errors since its rollout in July 2023. Thursday’s agenda also includes a discussion on performance budgeting, an update on the vocational rehabilitation budget.
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