Donna “Dee Dee” Williams works with people trying to stay off drugs and maintain a sober life. Her work revolves around coordinating services, including finding them available spots in recovery houses, where they can break away from old patterns and give themselves time to get healthy and back on their feet.
Although Williams gets her information on bed availability directly from organizations that provide them, the public and other health professionals can now see updated openings by using a new website.
Called Open Beds, the state website launched in late 2020 and reveals on many days the reality of mental health and drug treatment across Rhode Island: finding an available bed can be difficult.
On a recent afternoon, 520 beds were already filled at recovery houses across the state for that night, with only 50 open beds remaining. Including inpatient beds for mental and behavioral health treatment – which are also listed on the website – 723 of 791 total beds in the state were filled for the night.
The website provides regularly updated information on where treatment beds can be found for adolescents and children, elderly adults, and men and women. The nonprofits and hospitals that provide treatment programs each have a listing, with the number of filled beds and the number available.
‘You can see small pockets of availability where we have it.’
RYAN ERICKSON, R.I. Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals director of strategy and public affairs
Before Open Beds – www.ribhopenbeds.org – health care providers and families, or individuals, would have to place calls frantically trying to find an opening.
People trying to access substance use treatment need time – as much as a year – to have a structured setting, said Williams, director of the call center at Horizon Healthcare Partners, a nonprofit that operates Behavioral Health Link, the state’s only 24-hour call center that connects people seeking services to available programs.
“There are people who are out there who go into treatment, and then because they’ve burned so many bridges, they don’t have any place else to go,” said Williams. “They also don’t want to go back into the same cycle they just left. They want to go into a recovery living situation.”
While a person is in that recovery setting, Williams and her staff work to find them additional resources, including getting them on lists for subsidized housing or connecting them with job resources.
Open Beds, launched by the R.I. Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals, is intended to help users identify who provides services, and what kinds of availability exists for inpatient services, such as detox beds, crisis stabilization units and substance use residential programs.
Recovery houses, located in residential neighborhoods across the state, feature an on-site house manager. The homes are typically run by nonprofits and are licensed by the state but look like any other apartment or home.
In Rhode Island, 10 programs offer housing for men, while five homes are for women. Two are focused on veterans. Some people stay in recovery homes for a few months, others for as long as a year.
The recovery homes often have waitlists. This is particularly true for women seeking treatment, said Williams. She observed that for women, seeking residential treatment is particularly hard because they often have children or are caring for parents. Only Amos House, a Providence-based nonprofit, runs a program for women that allows them to bring their children.
For many, the COVID-19 pandemic has made recovery even more difficult, Williams said, isolating people from the social support they may need to stay sober and drug-free.
“Substance use can be a very social disease,” Williams said. “It’s about who you know, who you are around. If you are living a sober life, your friends and your support system is very important to you. Isolation is our enemy.”
With social isolation and job loss and the other fallout from the pandemic, more people appear to be struggling with substance use.
Rhode Island documented 356 fatal overdoses for the first 11 months of 2020, according to the data provided by the R.I. Department of Health. That represents nearly a 16% increase in deaths for the entirety of 2019, and the highest number reported since the state started publishing its overdose statistics seven years ago.
Whether the spike last year is directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet clear, said Ryan Erickson, director of strategy and public affairs for BHDDH. But the overdose epidemic has accelerated after several years of decline.
The state’s new Open Beds website, Erickson said, adds a lot of transparency for people who need support.
If the Open Beds website shows a lot of filled beds, it also reveals where the openings exist.
Families, patients and other health care professionals can then call the providers directly. “Even when the website tells us we are often at our capacity … you can see small pockets of availability where we have it,” Erickson said.
Mary MacDonald is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.