Kedren Health Receives $30 Million Grant To Expand Mental Health Services

Kedren Health is getting $30 million to expand mental health services for children.

South L.A.'s foremost community health care provider has offered critical medical services to low income Black residents since its opening in the 1960s. Sixty years later, the nonprofit hospital is still working to expand access to healthcare.

The facility has partnered with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health to create more psychiatric beds for minors in crisis. The multi-million dollar grant approved from the state will pay for a new behavioral health urgent care unit for children who are five-to-12 years old.

The expansion will include a building that will nearly double the capacity to provide inpatient acute mental health care for kids.

"This will help us to provide a longer length of stay and more stability," says Kedren Health’s CEO Dr. John Griffith, "so that we do not have a revolving door system with children coming in and out of hospital when they could ... be stabilized over a long period of time."

Griffith says grant money will also be used to make it easier for patients to get mental health services directly from their primary care provider.