Thumbnail: This conceptual comparison of a new Behavioral Health Campus versus the current Behavioral Health Branch facility was included in the county’s grant application for BHCIP dollars. | Image courtesy of District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey
Shiann Hogan sees many possibilities for Del Norte County’s new Behavioral Health Campus, but one thing it won’t be is a locked facility.
The deputy director for the county Behavioral Health Branch says the new facility will allow for expanded substance abuse and mental health programming. There will be a new sobering center and a mental health crisis respite center and the facility will complement the new EmPATH unit Sutter Coast Hospital is developing.
But those will be voluntary services, Hogan told Redwood Voice Community News on May 11.
“We will continue to use our locked facilities with the contracts that we have in place when appropriate,” Hogan said, referring to the agreements Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services have with providers outside of the area for behavioral health services. “But what we hope is that this gives people the opportunity to stabilize locally and not need to utilize those places. These continue to be voluntary services that we offer and hopefully we’ll be able to build a rapport and relationship with individuals who engage in those services.”
Del Norte County received a $33 million Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program (BHCIP) grant, District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey announced in an April 30 Facebook post.
DHHS submitted its grant proposal to the California Department of Health Care Services in November after receiving authorization from the Board of Supervisors a month earlier, Health and Human Services Director Ranell Brown said.
Despite receiving the grant money, the project is still in its early stages, Brown said. Her department included a conceptual design for the facility in their BHCIP application, but it still needs to find a site, onboard a construction manager and other contractors and conduct the necessary environmental studies to obtain building permits.
The project is also under a tight schedule, Brown told Redwood Voice.
“The funds need to be expended by 2031,” she said.
DHHS hopes to have the facility finished by June 30, 2028, Hogan said.
“That’s the goal we’re rolling with, which is an aggressive goal,” she said.
The BHCIP grant DHHS received is part of the Behavioral Health Services Act and the Behavioral Health Infrastructure Bond Act, which California voters approved as Proposition 1 in March 2024. The BHIBA is a $6.38 billion general obligation bond to develop treatment facilities and supportive housing for those experiencing mental health and substance abuse disorders.
According to Hogan, one of the primary goals for the round of grant funding Del Norte received was to support counties that lacked “certain services or modalities.”
The facility will allow the county Behavioral Health Branch to serve 60 additional clients in its substance use program. An additional 80 clients will be able to receive mental health services through the county at its new campus, according to Hogan.
“We’re adding two new functionalities in the new space,” she said. “One of those is a sobering center that will have 15 spots in it. And the other is what’s considered a mental health crisis respite center.”
Hogan said DHHS is working with a consultant who has experience developing sobering centers and mental health crisis respite centers. The department plans to make their two units interchangeable.
“If we have more people that need to stay in crisis respite and the sobering beds aren’t at capacity, we could perhaps fluctuate,” Hogan said.
Hogan also noted that the local EmPATH unit, which Sutter Coast Hospital is developing using $4 million in BHCIP dollars, will offer similar services to the county’s Behavioral Health Campus. The main difference is since the EmPATH Unit is at the hospital, medical staff is available to prescribe medication, she said.
EmPATH stands for Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing and was created by a doctor at a psychiatric emergency center in Alameda, Calif. That doctor, Scott Zeller, had been frustrated that the default treatment for those seeking emergency room help with a mental health crisis was placing them into an inpatient facility, according to a September 2023 Psychology Today article by William Haseltine.
In 2025, the hospital’s director of operations, Ellie Popadic, told Redwood Voice that the facility at Sutter Coast was the first EmPATH unit in a rural community.
On April 28, 2026, Sutter Coast Hospital CEO Michael Lane told county supervisors that the EmPATH unit was the big building out on the front lawn. The hospital had been receiving furniture and doing landscaping around the building. Sutter Coast will cut the ribbon on the facility on June 9 and will open the facility around July 1, Lane said.
“It all depends on the regulatory agencies that give us the inspections,” he said.
Once it’s up and running, people will be able to visit the EmPATH Unit if they are in a mental health crisis and receive up to 23 hours of care with medication and medical monitoring, Hogan said. If they’re not ready to go home after those 23 hours, they could move to the county’s mental health respite center for additional services, she said.
“I could see that happening the reverse way,” Hogan told Redwood Voice. “Someone coming to us and (us) realizing they have a higher level of need or they need that medication piece and we transfer them over to the EmPATH Unit, and then maybe (they come) back to us.”
Additional service providers may also be part of the equation for DHHS’s new Behavioral Health campus, though how many will be needed is still to be determined, Brown said. Efforts in the wider community to recruit medical health providers are typically focused on doctors, but, Brown said, could include psychiatrists.
In addition to looking for opportunities to recruit more providers, Brown said the organizations DHHS contracts with can also link the department to their providers.
Another opportunity Hogan identified came at the Del Norte County Economic Summit at Lucky 7 Casino on April 29. She said she spoke with high school students attending the summit who talked about their interest in pursuing careers in healthcare.
Hogan also spoke with Gale West, a teacher who advises the medical club at Del Norte High School.
“She really wants to emphasize behavioral health in their club next year,” Hogan said. “I thought that was a great way for us to get high school students interested in a behavioral health career pathway.”
Hogan also mentioned College of the Redwoods’ new psychiatric technician program which began accepting applications in February for Fall 2026. The program aims to prepare students to meet the requirements to become a licensed psychiatric technician in California. Graduates will be able to work at private and state hospitals, developmental centers and community mental health facilities, according to CR’s Dec. 2, 2025 announcement.
Hogan said a nursing instructor at CR also pointed out that students need experience in behavioral health settings as well.
“I thought here’s our pipeline to potential employees in the future,” she said.
In her Facebook post, Starkey called the $33 million BHCIP grant a transformational investment for Del Norte County. The “complete continuum of care” the new behavioral health campus will provide has been needed for years, she said.
“For too long, individuals experiencing behavioral health challenges have had limited options, often relying on emergency rooms or law enforcement,” Starkey said. “This is more than a project. It’s a long-term commitment to improving outcomes, supporting families and strengthening the overall health and stability of our community.”
