Clay County Commission

Dan Haglund

A bonding request presentation included an emotional plea from one Clay County commissioner on Tuesday in Moorhead during the regular board meeting.
After Clay County Human Resource Director Darren Brooke made a request for approval in support of a Residential Psychiatric Treatment Facility (PRTF) bonding bill (Resolution 2024-32), Dist. 3 Commissioner Jenny Mongeau expressed how important such a facility is for the youth in this part of the state.
In tearful plea to fellow board members, Mongeau expressed the dire need of such a facility.
“We’ve had lot of parents and families reach out to us about how this is so needed,” Mongeau said. “Their stories are heart-breaking. Raising children is really hard. And raising children with intense, acute medical needs and mental needs is almost impossible.
“And so when you have 26 counties and five tribal nations say this is a need and a gap in care, I just don’t know what it will take to get the state to help. I’m emotional because those parents reach out to us and share their heart-breaking stories.”
Commissioner Kevin Campbell, Dist. 4, followed up by assuring Mongeau and the rest of the board by recounting an anecdote from the 1997 flood, and being denied funding to help those whose lives had been ruined.
He remembered being interviewed about it and he said, “We’re going to keep going because it’s the right thing to do.”
He added, “And what we’re doing now is the right thing to do. When you keep doing that, you’re going to be successful. We’re going to be successful in this. We’re going to stand strong and make sure this happens.”
The bonding bill would seek to get state funds to remodel the existing non-secure West Central Regional Juvenile Center in Moorhead into a PRTF, as well as to secure funding to replace the existing non-secure facility from the 2025 legislative session. Funding was denied in the last session.
Per Brooke’s explanation, a PRTF provides physician-directed treatment at an in-patient level of care for individuals under age 21 with complex mental health needs, as well as their families, based on medical necessity.
Brooke said this level of care includes daily active treatment, which is achieved through a combination of family, group and individual therapy, consultation and treatment planning with a comprehensive team of medical and behavioral staff in a highly-structured living environment.
PRTFs are not considered foster care placements, Brooke said, and children or youth are admitted only after a medical necessity is determined.
“The reason for this resolution is that currently in the state of Minnesota we have four PRTFs,” Brooke said. “One of them is in Sibley County, one in Nicollet County, one in Anoka County and one’s in St. Louis County … They are all on the eastern side of the state. There are no PRTFs on the western side of the state.”
All of the existing facilities are between a seven- to nine-hour round-trip drive from Moorhead.
Brooke said the lack of a facility on the western side of the state makes it hard for kids needing services to stay close to their family base and medical providers.
He said some planning has already started to use the existing Juvenile Detention Center to transform it into a PRTF.
“And if successful, with the bonding bill, this will bring much-needed services to the residents of Clay County and the surrounding areas,” Brooke said.
Mongeau added some clarification to the bonding request process.
“I think it’s important to note that we’ve shifted this a little bit,” Mongeau said. “We’re going after state grant funding and also the governor’s budget, but not leaving bonding out. So I don’t want to approve something specifically to bonding because we are going after it in a little different way than last year.”
Quinn Jaeger, Clay County Social Services director, also wanted to add that the initial project was to build a stand-alone, brick-and-mortar PRTF building.
“But we had some very astute members of the committee realize when we were talking about the planning of that,” Jaeger said. “We have that facility already in our non-secure detention center.”
Campbell, who is on the PRTF committee, said something came up on Monday with a Department of Human Services tour of the current detention facility.
“They were impressed with the facility,” Campbell said. “One of the things they asked for was that if a portion of that PRTF could be considered a locked facility. Because there is not one in the state and it’s needed. And so we’re looking at maybe redesigning that to maybe have one of our pods fit that component of being locked for the purposes of some of those extreme cases.”
Campbell said that when such a request comes from DHS, the board should strongly consider it.
The swath of need for the facility, according to Jaeger, was initially set to cover 23 counties, three Native tribes, as well as the Moorhead School District. He said he doesn’t have all the updated resolutions from these groups as yet.
Local support has also come from the Moorhead School District, Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia College, and the city of Moorhead has requested a presentation as well.