The Durham Center
The Durham Center provides "behavioral health and disability services" in Durham County, and plays a supportive role in a somewhat complex inter-agency web which I don't quite understand. They are the "LME|" for Durham County mental health services.
They are located at 501 Willard Street.
Other locations which appear to have been consolidated to Willard Street sometime between 2005 and 2008 included:
- Access Unit – 2609 N. Duke Street
- downtown in back of the old Sears building
Josh history
We originally got Josh into their system in late 2003. His case was mysteriously closed in February 2004, with no notification to us (and in spite of our repeated efforts at contacting them).
In February 2005, we were finally able to get back in touch with them; at that point they knew that we had not asked for his case to be clased and had been actively seeking services at the time.
Although they did try to be helpful at that point, their efforts fell rather short of what we would have expected:
- They might have simply re-opened Josh's case, rather than making us go through the intake process again...
- ...or explained why that wasn't an option
- They did not respond to my question about whether the ACCESS unit could email us to help initiate the intake process
- They could have at least explained the process (you choose an intake provider, set up an appointment, bring Josh, do some paperwork which takes 1-2 hours -- though the intake provider we eventually used found a way to shorten this; I think it was that we used Josh's latest IEP as an evaluation, instead of whatever evaluation they normally needed to do) so we would have some idea of what to expect
- They might have investigated why his case was closed, and offered some explanation -- or an apology, if there was no good explanation
- They could have paid closer attention to his case, to make sure that Josh did not "slip through the cracks" again -- but unfortunately, this is exactly what happened
As a result, we were not able to get him back in The Durham Center's system until early 2008 -- three years after they knew that his case shouldn't have been closed, and that we were trying to get it reopened.