The need for services Centerstone provides is growing in Brown County, and a new building is making room for it to happen.
After being on Mound Street in Nashville for around 20 years, the not-for-profit mental health provider has a new home at 1156 Old State Road 46. The office moved last May to part of the space, and in September, Centerstone took over the whole building. Staff celebrated with an open house last month.
Centerstone serves people of all ages. Services include integrated mental and physical health care; addiction treatment and prevention, including medication-assisted treatment; treatment for people with a mental illness, including psychiatric services and medication management; individual, couples and family counseling; school-based therapy; and 24-hour crisis services.
Child and Family Services Manager Amanda Kinnaird said there were a few reasons why Centerstone decided to make the move and purchase this building.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“The simplest reason is program growth. We’ve expanded a lot,” she said.
When Kinnaird first started working at Centerstone in 2006, there were three clinicians, including herself and two therapists.
Now, Centerstone has 40 staff members serving Brown County, from therapists to family support specialists to recovery coaches and health coaches. Centerstone also has a nurse practitioner on staff.
The office on Mound Street became crowded. “There’s no way to fit everyone in there in a way that felt good for clients and that felt appropriate,” Kinnaird said.
At their former location, Centerstone was working out of three different rented suites, meaning employees had to go outside to enter another part of the building.
“One thing that I think is important to remember is the dignity of our clients, and walking into this building feels good. It feels like they’re coming in as important people deserving quality treatment,” Kinnaird said.
Martha Bowman, coordinator for adult and family services, said that Centerstone purchasing the building also boosted staff morale “because Centerstone invested in all of us as clinicians,” she said. “… We got to sit down and helped plan out what we needed, the space we needed, and they honored that.”
“They invested in Brown County,” Kinnaird added.
“It feels good to me to know that Centerstone as an organization really aligns with us and the community and believes that it’s important and that we’re sustainable here. They wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
What’s inside
Centerstone has been doing more community-based work, including having family support specialists in all Brown County schools and visiting clients at home.
The new building is designed to help future program growth, such as having drop-in spaces for therapists.
“They don’t have to consume a whole office and then we run out and can’t hire. We can still have five therapists, and they’re reserving a room when they need to,” Kinnaird said.
The new office has a large reception area, bathrooms, an employee break room, exercise room, parking lots in front and behind the building, a drop-in space for play therapy and working with children, a second drop-in space for adult therapy, a group room and a community gallery suite.
The group room is where the intensive outpatient group meets three times a week and a dual recovery group meets once a week.
Off the community gallery suite is the Ernest Reuben Martin Jr. Group Room where other staff and group meetings can take place. Martin died in a car crash on Bear Wallow Hill Road in June 2017. Along with being pastor at Gnaw Bone Wesleyan Church, he worked as a family support specialist at Centerstone from 2015 to 2017.
“He was a loving father, husband and friend; and he dedicated his time to helping children and families in our community. He will always be remembered,” reads part of the plaque that hangs outside the room.
What they do
The top types of cases Centerstone helps both adult and child clients with are trauma, substance use disorder and anxiety/depression, Kinnaird said.
Of all the referrals Centerstone receives from the Department of Child Services, at least 80 percent are due to substance use, Kinnaird said.
“I would say that substance use impacts nearly all of our families in different ways, whether it’s a family member, parent, a friend or another loved one,” she said.
For children referred to Centerstone through the schools, Kinnaird said the percentage is “a lot less” connected to substance abuse. It’s more about trauma, she said.
“A lot of it relates back to parents trying to navigate a substance use disorder or their own mental health issues. There’s a lot that comes along with abuse, neglect and the impacts of that,” Kinnaird said.
“Prevention is absolutely key, because these littles are still very much exposed to substance use and at risk for substance use disorder down the line. I do think early intervention is important,” she said.
Kinnaird said Brown County schools are taking proactive measures, like focusing on social-emotional learning.
“I am hopeful we’ll have increased identification of kids that are at risk for substance use or they are actively struggling with a substance use disorder, and that there will be an increased sense of safety and security around seeking treatment rather than it being more punitive, because I think that’s a barrier,” she said.
Working together
Currently, Centerstone is looking to hire five people, including three family support specialists in the schools, one for home-based work and a peer recovery specialist.
Centerstone receives an average of about 10 referrals a week, so more help is needed to meet the community’s needs, she said.
Having less actual office space means employees are connected more as they work in the community room on a variety cases together, Kinnaird said.
She said there times when the Centerstone adult team has taken a child on as a client because it works better and vice versa.
“It’s not about, ‘Oh that’s not my client’ or ‘It should be your client.’ This is about what’s best for this person,” she said.
Working together as Centerstone employees also mirrors how Centerstone works with other organizations in the county. “It seems like there could be a lot of power struggles between various social service agencies, in between schools, probation or DCS or community mental health, and I don’t feel like that is the case (here) at all,” Kinnaird said.
“We had a staff meeting this morning. We now have once-a-month meetings with all DCS staff coming to Centerstone with all Centerstone staff. We sit and we go through challenges. It’s a collaborative effort where we’re all working together.”
“Every single board I’m on, it’s like the more resources we have, the better. It’s not like, ‘We’re better than you’ or competitive. I think that’s something special about Brown County and our community, one of the reasons I love working here,” she said.
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Do you want to know more about the services Centerstone provides, or are you in need of help? Call the Nashville office at 812-200-2685 or visit centerstone.org.
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The Treatment and Support subcommittee of the Brown County Drug Free Coalition is partnering with Centerstone to host a free education session on addiction on May 15.
“You Are Not Alone: How opioid use is affecting your friends and family” will take place at 6 p.m. at Nashville United Methodist Church.
The program is open to anyone who has questions about addiction issues. It will feature a brief Narcan demonstration followed by distribution of the anti-overdose medicine from the Brown County Health Department.
In Indiana, there were 1,118 deaths related to opioids in 2017.
“Our hope is to make 2019 a better year,” the event’s flyer reads.
The church is located at 36 South Jefferson Street in Nashville.
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