A shuttered San Luis Obispo County facility will be repurposed into a new avenue of care for local youth in need.
Once underused, the previous crisis stabilization unit at 2180 Johnson Ave. will be equipped with four beds for short-term intensive therapeutic care for foster kids aged 12 to 17 years. Though the proposed facility will prioritize foster youth, all children in the county are eligible to receive services.
The revamp is funded through a $4.6 million contract with Crestwood Behavioral Health—the county’s psychiatric health facility—from July 2026 to June 2028. The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the contract at its June 16 meeting.
“I’ll express my appreciation for the fact that we look at a facility, maybe it’s not working for another purpose, we repurpose it,” 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding said at the meeting. “We fill that gap in the continuum. We know we need the beds for foster youth.”
The contract includes a $3.7 million State Children’s Crisis Continuum Pilot Program grant awarded to the SLO County Department of Social Services and the Behavioral Health Department. SLO County was one of the eight California counties that received the pilot program grant.
Currently, 168 minors live in foster care along with 50 dependent youth between 18 and 21 years old. Scheduled to arrive in the fall, according to Behavioral Health spokesperson Caroline Schmidt, the beds eliminate the need for children who need help to leave the county to receive inpatient therapeutic care.
For foster youth, the facility helps when their needs can’t be safely met in a family home setting even when they don’t require inpatient psychiatric hospitalization.
From July 2025 to May 2026, 81 minors were sent out of the county for psychiatric stays, according to Schmidt.
“They stayed a total of 809 days with the average length of each psychiatric hospitalization lasting seven days,” she said. “Otherwise, several of the youth were sent out of county for psychiatric stays more than once in the year.”
The new four-bed facility belongs to a system called Enhanced Short-Term Residential Therapeutic Program or E-STRTP. Unlike traditional longer-range STRTP, the short-term stabilization method lasts from 10 to 30 days. It’s anticipated that the proposed county program will serve youth for periods of up to 15 days based on medical necessity.
Schmidt told New Times that multiple county planning efforts, like the 2023 Capstone Consulting youth behavioral health gaps analysis and the 2024-29 strategic plan, identified the need for expanded youth crisis services.
“From these reports came recommendations that the Behavioral Health Department consider implementing a crisis psychiatric residential treatment program including an STRTP to serve children and youth,” she said. “Youth at the facility will receive highly individualized treatment plans through coordination across child welfare, behavioral health, education, and outpatient service systems.”
Services include individual and family therapy or counseling as clinically indicated, individual rehabilitation, medication support, intensive home-based service, group rehabilitation, plan development, assessment, group therapy or counseling, crisis intervention, case management services, and medication support.
With assessments offered Monday through Friday, the facility will run around the clock. While the exact start date of the facility is unknown, the county now must wait for the contractor to furnish the building, hire and train staff, and apply for the state license to operate the program.
“The new program will support stabilization for youth stepping down from hospitalization and help prevent hospitalization and law enforcement involvement for others,” Schmidt said. ∆
This article appears in July 2-9, 2026.
