Mahoning Valley Campus of Care aims to bring families home, ‘keep kids close’

MINERAL RIDGE — The Mahoning Valley Campus of Care could anchor new services bringing produce to the county’s food deserts and offering living spaces for those with developmental disabilities or mental illnesses, operators said Wednesday.

Those various health and social agency partners and directors of the Western Reserve Port Authority, the campus’ property manager, met Wednesday at the newly reopened 35-acre campus along County Line Road — the former Youngstown Developmental Center.

It was shuttered by the state in 2017, forcing Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities clients to seek much-needed services for those with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses outside the area — sometimes hours away from home and as far as southwestern Ohio, board Superintendent Bill Whitacre told directors Wednesday.

“It was a jewel,” Duane Piccirilli, executive director of the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board, told directors Wednesday.

John Moliterno, the authority’s executive director, said it’s “hard to tell” where the center’s former clientele has gone in the four years since the facility closed, but he hopes news of its revival and new offerings will bring them home.

Boundless Behavioral Health, a Columbus agency that’s new to the Valley, now operates an after-school camp for children with developmental disabilities at the campus and has plans for adult day services and various forms of counseling, and a youth respite cottage, Regional Director Lauri Livingston-Roberts told directors Wednesday.

The goal is to “keep kids close to family and support those families,” Livingston-Roberts said.

Boundless has created 15 new jobs at the campus so far, she said.

At its peak, the campus is expected to employ 250 workers and serve 500 people each day, Mahoning Commissioner David Ditzler said Wednesday.

The county took on a new $1.3 million loan last year to refresh the center’s aged infrastructure — roofing and plumbing — and make it move-in ready, said commissioners’ Executive Director Audrey Tillis.

The state’s capital budget had passed on the campus. Alta Behavioral Healthcare was on the clock to spend a $500,000 state grant for its new operation at the campus.

“It was the only way to get the building up and going. We’d been trying to get state money. That was being delayed,” Tillis said. “We had to do something in order so these agencies could start moving. … These agencies have been holding on, they’ve been wanting to do expansions and things like that and they’ve been patient.”

Moliterno said the venture was “a bit of a gamble” for commissioners, but it is founding promising collaborations among the campus’ various operators, including Alta Behavioral Healthcare, Meridian Healthcare, COMPASS Family and Community Services, Cadence Care Network, Flying High Inc., Boundless and others.

With the campus’ existing structures revitalized and various providers now at work, the next step is seeking state funding for new buildings on still-vacant portions of the campus, Moliterno said.

Joe Caruso, COMPASS CEO, envisions a 27-bed long-term care facility for people with multiple disabilities or “severe, persistent mental illness,” with a close ratio of healthcare workers to residents.

“We want to create a place that does not [currently] exist here in our community,” Caruso told directors Wednesday. “We do not have an assisted living-type facility for persons with mental illness or people who are in recovery who are not able to live independently but do not need a nursing home-level of care … to have a place where someone is able to live with dignity and respect.”

Jeffrey Magada, executive director of Flying High, said the agency plans to box and distribute locally grown produce to the region’s food deserts, with the manpower coming from the agency’s workforce development clients.

“It’s growing their lives and providing food,” Magada said. “This is one of the good things that has come out of COVID — the coalescing of a number of agencies trying to get food into various parts of Mahoning County; Trumbull County.”

This story was originally published April 22, 2021 at 4:11 AM with the headline "Mahoning Valley Campus of Care aims to bring families home, ‘keep kids close’."