On a typical day, Amber Ruth, a licensed social worker and mental health professional at People Incorporated, Minnesota’s largest community based mental health provider, is out and about — at homeless encampments, in drop-in shelters and at public libraries — helping to connect people with the services they need to treat their mental health and substance use issues.
On a recent Tuesday morning, when Ruth was working her regular weekly drop-in hours at St. Paul’s Rondo Community Library, she completed a mental health assessment for a woman in crisis and helped her get signed up for an intensive residential treatment services (IRTS) bed run by People Incorporated. “I was able to work with our central access team to find her a place,” she said. “She was picked up from the library and brought into IRTS within an hour-and-a-half.”
This rapid response to community needs is made possible by the recent expansion of People Incorporated’s Access and Recovery Center (ARC) services, which now include substance use and outpatient mental health support. This expansion, which brings Ruth and other mental health care workers out of the office and into the community to provide essential services where they are needed, represents a significant step in delivering compassionate, integrated care to underserved people in the Twin Cities, said Veronika E. Mix, People Incorporated vice president of community engagement…