Mental health and drug counseling services provided locally since the 1970s by Fayette Counseling Center face a funding shortfall that may cause the center to close mid-year unless office space can be found.

Director Jane Fanslow said Fayette Counseling Center is expected to have a $32,874 revenue shortfall beginning in July and has asked the Fayette County Commission to consider providing office space that would offset the $32,103 in rent currently paid for the center’s Braxton Court office in Fayetteville.

“We didn’t have anywhere else to turn,” Fanslow said of the request to commissioners. ”We’re already operating on a shoestring.”

Fayette Counseling Center’s 2007 revenues are projected at $335,083, which includes the cut in state funding and the addition of a portion of the area medical director’s salary. Revenues for the same period are projected at $367,957, a shortfall of $32,874.

It is an amount that Fanslow hopes will be offset if commissioners can find available office space so that the center can meet its budget obligations and continue to provide the only services of its kind in Fayette County.

The center is budgeted for $125,270 in county funding for 2007, along with state funding reduced to $93,049, Medicaid/Medicare funding at $69,467, client fees totaling $53,811 and private insurance totaling $3,891.

Currently serving 239 people and averaging more than 50 visits per week, the center provides therapeutic counseling, psychiatric care, nursing assessments, child and adolescent services, employment counseling, community outreach and reduced prices for psychiatric and other needed medications.

“The loss to Fayette County citizens with severe mental illness and substance abuse issues would be immense,” Fanslow told county commissioners in a Feb. 7 letter. “We handle many informational phone calls for family members desperate to find help for their loved ones who have no insurance and we can provide knowledge of local resources which a centralized phone operator may likely not know. We accept walk-ins, people who are in crisis and may need referral to detox or psychiatric inpatient or need immediate assistance to prevent a hospitalization.”

Fayette Counseling is one of the many sites operated by McIntosh Trail Community Services Board across a seven-county area.

Fanslow said the funding climate in Georgia is undergoing a transformation. It is the transition to the upcoming fee-for-service funding methodology and the decreases that will accompany the new method that are partly responsible for the shortfall.

The Fayette center’s budget is also impacted by the addition of $38,000 in the personnel portion of the budget that had not been present in previous years. That cost is for the center’s portion of the direct psychiatric services provided by the McIntosh Trail medical director.

The center’s $191,000 personnel budget pays for its portion of the medical director’s salary and that of four full-time and five part-time staff composed of nurses, therapists, community support staff, clerical staff and the director.

“McIntosh Trail had been absorbing more of the cost of the medical director. Now those service hours will be paid by the centers,” Fanslow said.

A well-known outcome experienced nationwide with the closure of outpatient community centers is that of having an increase in case load for area medical services, emergency services and public safety agencies, Fanslow said.

“If mental health and substance abuse services are not readily available in the community, law enforcement, Fayette County courts, the hospital emergency department and the jail will be inundated with people that our site is currently serving,” she said. “And the quality of life of our consumers’ lives and those of their families will diminish.”

A potential alternative to having the Fayette center’s doors closed in July would be one where McIntosh Trail might assign a mobile counseling unit to serve local needs. Such a move, Fanslow said, would serve some, but not all, of those currently using the outpatient facility in Fayetteville.

“Some people might be comfortable with mobile services, but others will be paranoid and refuse services rather than admit a worker into their homes or be seen entering a van,” she explained. “Though it is not yet known how mobile services would be provided, the frequency and availability of services most likely would be cut.”

During Thursday night’s County Commission meeting, several residents asked the board to consider the center’s plight during upcoming discussions.

“The center is in dire straits. We have a daughter that has a bipolar disorder and the center has been so important to us,” said Ken Schall.

Linda Lane, who has a son being served by the center, said the counseling center has had a huge impact in the life of her family.

“We had no clue how to handle our son before we went to the center,” she said.

One of the workers at the center, Connie Biemiller, beseeched the board to find a solution.

“It’s a vital thing. We are compelled to do something,” she said.

Biemiller added that Pathway Center in Coweta County had to close because of a reduction in state funds and the Fayette center was now seeing many Coweta residents who had nowhere else to turn.

“Without us, there’s only emergency rooms and state mental hospitals, and many of these people don’t belong in those hospitals,” Biemiller said.

— Staff Writer John Thompson contributed to this article.

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