Officials try to calm anxieties over Rancho Restorative Village
Photo by Mario Guerra
DOWNEY – Officials doubled down on their claims that the upcoming Rancho Los Amigos Restorative Care Village will cater mostly to patients discharged from the hospital during a virtual town hall held last week.
The event held last Thursday brought together LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn and Mayor Claudia M. Frometa along with several other officials attached to the project, giving residents a chance to voice their concerns and ask questions about the upcoming edition to the Rancho campus.
Once completed, the site will include two facilities: a 50-bed Recuperative Care Center and a five building, 80-bed Crisis Residential Treatment Program.
“The Restorative Care Village is an extension of the Rancho Los Amigos Hospital and a continuation of the work the incredible doctors and staff do every day rebuilding their patients’ lives,” said Hahn. “Rancho Los Amigos doctors treat patients who have experienced life-changing and life-altering illnesses and injuries. The doctors there give them hope and they give them a future, but even after they’re discharged from this hospital, patients need time to recover and to adapt to their new normal.”
“Usually when someone is discharged from the hospital, they’re sent home to their families to recover. Some of the patients leaving Rancho do not have families or a home to go to; they don’t have the support system they need to fully recover, and they could even end up back living on the streets after their being discharged.
“I think that all of us can agree that that is not an outcome that any of us would want. That’s the problem the Restorative Care Village aims to solve.”
Hahn added that unlike other similar care villages at other county hospitals, the Rancho facilities will be “specifically focused on the rehabilitation of Rancho’s patients.”
In addition, hospital CEO Aries Limbaga expressed that the project fills an already present need at the hospital to place rehabilitated patients who needed placement.
“We were running about 75 patients in our hospital just waiting for placement, waiting for housing,” said Limbaga. “They were done with their rehab program and they were occupying a bed, but they really didn’t need those intensive services. That is why we really wanted to have this Recuperative Care village on site.”
“These patients are already here on our campus. Most of these patients were not homeless in the beginning; they were working but some catastrophic event happened….and there was no family, they were living paycheck to paycheck, then they ended up homeless because of that.”
Limbaga added that the hospital had LA County Sheriff’s and it’s own security team to manage safety concerns.
Still, the project has sparked some apprehension over the safety of the surrounding community.
These concerns manifested in questions over who would be staying at these new facilities, where they would come from, and how long they would be staying.
According to officials, no walk-ups would be accepted.
Length of stay differs between the Recuperative Care Center and the Crisis Residential Treatment Program.
According to Libby Boyce, Director of Access, Referral and Engagement for the Housing for Health Program, patients are kept “until they are permanently housed,” which can be anywhere from three to nine months.
The Crisis program will likely see patients stay between two weeks and a month, according to Dr. Jonathan E. Sherin, Director of the LA County Department of Mental Health.
“The reason for that, which I think is distinct from what Libby is describing is this isn’t housing, this is very treatment oriented,” said Sherin. “The idea is actually to move people towards housing…that’s why the stays are much shorter.”
Officials also confirmed that there would be no one taken from jails.