Community Engagement Opportunity for King County Crisis Care Centers

As you may have seen in the news (see here, here, here, and in a Reddit board here), King County has recently adopted Connections Kirkland as the 1st of 5 Crisis Care Centers, to be funded by the Levy approved in 2023 and is considering 1145 Broadway as the location for its second Crisis Care Center.  

We want to hear from you. Please check out the community survey we created.

What we’re hearing from the community is largely “yay, this is desperately needed!” as well as “uh, oh, is this going to turn out like the recently closed Navigation Center in Little Saigon!?”

We are working with the King County Department of Community and Human Services to host a meeting for the community, to ask questions and learn more. Please stay tuned for an announcement of a meeting date and location, which we are working on.

In the meantime, please send us your questions about the crisis care centers and/or the specific site at 1145 Broadway.  

Some initial questions raised: 

• What is being done to address the significant under-utilization of Connections Kirkland and the UW mental health facility? 
• What will be done to improve the cross-department coordination needed to get people into care and to ensure successful hand-offs to support services upon discharge? 
• At the last community meeting, it was stated that only a fraction of the PolyClinic space is needed and the rest of the space may be leased, but plans for the rest of the space are not firm.  Is committing $50MM of tax payer funds to be tied up in a piece of real estate, rather than dedicating ALL of the $50MM to the opening of multiple crisis care centers as soon as possible represent the best way to address an immediate need and. the best use of tax payer dollars?
• What is being done to ensure safety for the surrounding community? 
• What is being done to address the existing drug trafficking issues surrounding this site? 
• What are the patient discharge hand-off plans? How will you ensure that patients are connected with services following treatment?

Fill out the survey with your questions or email us (chcc.officers@gmail.com)

Here is the latest newsletter from the King County Crisis Center has more details.