TOLEDO, Ohio — There is a new safe place coming for Toledo kids in crisis — and it doesn’t look or feel like an institution.

Unison Health cut the ribbon Thursday on its newly renovated Child Wellness Campus in downtown Toledo, a 12-bed facility on Cherry Street built for children and young adults ages 6 to 21 with severe behavioral health and developmental challenges. The campus opens in January, and it fills a gap families here know all too well: right now, a young person in crisis can end up waiting in an emergency room for a residential bed that simply isn’t available.

The campus will provide short-term, trauma-informed residential care, with stays of 30 days or less. Staff will work to stabilize each child, build life skills, and get them home — reunited with family or placed in a foster home. Unison is partnering with Lucas County Children Services, and the campus will serve families across 24 counties, with a call-ahead process so partners can check bed availability before making the trip.

“We have youth that are waiting for a family member that’s going to come from out of state to take them home with them, but that’s going to take a week, so we can be that short-term stay in between levels of care when there’s not another appropriate place for them to go,” said Amy Kobold, Unison Health’s chief operating officer. The space was designed to feel like a home, she said — warm, welcoming, and safe. Peer support specialist Tyra George put it simply: the children aren’t bad, and their trauma can make them seem that way. “If you just need time to breathe, scream, throw something, kick, yell, we can do that together. I want them to know that you’re not going through this alone.”

Sources: 13abc/WTVG

Photo: THX0477, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — illustrative photo of children playing (not the campus).