Gastineau Human Services officially opened the new Mount Juneau Counseling and Recovery building in Lemon Creek on Thursday.
The social services nonprofit’s additional facilities also feature an additional 8-beds in its substance use treatment center that offers residential services to now serve up to 27 people at a time.
Gastineau Human Services Executive Director Jonathan Swinton said four of those beds have already been occupied for a week, and the counseling center has been in operation for longer.
“We’ve been running in this building for a couple of months now, but just being strategic to find time we could do this formal ceremony,” he said during Thursday’s ribbon cutting.
This comes a month after Bartlett Regional Hospitalʼs Rainforest Recovery Center shut its doors. This new addition replaces half of Rainforest’s former capacity. Bartlett donated furniture from its program to GHS for the new program.
The new residential facility was originally slated to open in January, but opened earlier to fill the gap left by Rainforest’s closure. Swinton said they are still trying to fill some staff positions.
GHS already offers transitional housing for people experiencing homelessness and who were recently incarcerated.
Board President Forrest Clough said GHS has expanded rapidly to try to meet Juneau’s needs for more addiction and mental health treatment.
“What we’ve seen over the course of the last couple years here is really a big expansion of our services and trying to meet unmet needs in the community, trying to break out of what we were doing and what we’ve been doing for years,” Clough said. “And not stop doing those things, but expand on that to meet the community’s current needs, and being able to step in and fill some of the holes that have been left as service providers have dropped out.“
Swinton also showed off an undeveloped parcel of land that will be developed into a 51-bed residential center on campus. The City and Bureau of Juneau gave GHS $2 million for this future expansion.
This story has been edited to clarify the additional facilities and services GHS now offers.
