Among bulldozers and construction crews, Sen. Ron Wyden visited Oregon City on Monday, June 24 to tour the new Parrott Creek Youth Residential Treatment Campus.
Wyden was joined by two teens currently residing at Parrott Creek’s temporary campus and several members of the Parrot Creek staff: Executive Director Simon Fulford, residential program manager Leah Lamb and campaign director Robbie Leggett.
Parrott Creek Child and Family Services is an Oregon City based organization that opened in 1968. Parrott Creek focuses on providing community-based services, residential and outpatient treatment, recovery homes and mental and behavioral health services for low-income youth and families in the great Portland metro region.
Before he toured the site, Wyden sat with the two teens and asked them about their goals for the future and what their interests were. Since moving to Parrott Creek, both felt they were treated better than they were in the juvenile corrections system.
“My question for the kids is, ‘Tell me a little bit about your goals’ because this is deeply personal to the Wyden household; my brother was schizophrenic. We went for years and years on end going to bed at night worried that he would hurt himself or someone else because of the illness; he really lost the capacity to have goals,” said Wyden. “To listen to these young people talk about what they’re interested in — photography or being a chef or in business — that’s the linchpin for the future, to be able to be hopeful about real goals.”
Slated to officially open next summer, the new residential campus will provide 40 beds for kids and teens in the foster care system, juvenile corrections and health and human services. The campus will also include substance-use treatment beds, something that Fulford said is desperately needed for youth in Oregon.
Parrott Creek and Wyden hoped these youth residential treatment programs would be a model nationwide.
“A decade or more ago, when we first started thinking about and planning for the renovation of the campus, at that point we had a very kind of small, limited idea. It was, ‘Let’s just renovate the buildings and keep doing what we do.’ Then about four years ago, just before the pandemic, when we really started planning in earnest for the campus redevelopment, we realized just that wasn’t good enough, and the needs of youth and our communities, understandably, had evolved since when Parrott Creek was first founded,” said Fulford. “The number of youth needing this type of care and treatment … hasn’t gone down — in some ways, I would say it’s increased — but what has changed is the type of care and treatment that they need.”
While the idea to expand Parrott Creek’s residential campus has been in the works for a while, $3.5 million in lottery bond funding was secured in 2021. Earlier this year, Parrott Creek was one of 19 community-initiated projects to be included in the US FY-24 minibus funding package secured by Wyden, Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Of the $36 million appropriated, Parrott Creek will receive $2 million.
“That’s why I’m so thrilled to be here and to see these people giving young people who’ve had real challenges, very often through no fault of their own, a better future,” said Wyden. Wyden held hearings in the Senate Finance Committee on neglect and abuse at many federally-funded residential treatment facilities earlier this month and wants to create a new model for behavioral treatment for youth.
“Juvenile corrections and the child welfare system, I would say it’s evolving — a lot of behavioral health infrastructure is sort of old and creaking. The buildings you walk into to receive treatment as a youth or as an adult don’t exactly fill you with joy and a sense of hope and purpose. It feels still very institutional and clinical, which makes you feel like, ‘I’m here because I have a problem and they’re going to fix me,’ as opposed to, ‘I’m here in a beautiful, nurturing environment to be my very best self.’ Those are really very subtle, but they’re quite profound,” said Fulford.
This evolved thinking changed the design of the new residential campus, incorporating the natural surroundings of the Parrott Creek ranch-style campus and adding 10 substance-use disorder treatment beds.
“That was not in our thinking three years ago,” said Fulford. “It is at the forefront of our thinking today and that will be one of the dedicated programs we open with.”
Fulford added that mental health challenges and conditions have increased for teenagers and that providing intervention resources and support would help youth navigate away from the juvenile justice system.
“The trauma-informed design is something when we started this project we didn’t know anything about. It’s intentionally about helping kids or adults heal,” said Fulford.
Some of these new design choices seem simple, like having magnetic walls for decorations, but will make a big impact on residents.
Fulford said that Wyden’s office has been helpful in the process of securing additional funding for the 80-acre site and supporting their continued behavioral health work in Oregon.
Surrounded by old-growth forest along the actual Parrot Creek, the only remaining structure from the original campus is the basketball court, slated to be redesigned and incorporated into the landscaping of the new buildings. Built sustainably and intended to last for decades, the new campus is seen as an investment in behavioral health for Clackamas County.
“I’m convinced Parrott Creek is going to be a model for putting kids first,” said Wyden. “We’ll have a twofer because, in addition to helping kids today, we’ll help other kids in the future because we’ll have been able to create other rural facilities that can see the Parrot Creek and say, ‘Those folks sure got it right.’”
Most Popular
Comments / 0