It's an ambitious goal to address a big and growing concern in Wisconsin.
Children's Wisconsin plans to open three new mental health walk-in clinics and it just got a multi-million-dollar boost from Koh's to make it happen, one each year over the next three years.
"These three new walk-in clinics will do a variety of things. One, they will expand services around the state of Wisconsin," said Amy Herbst, Vice President of Mental and Behavioral Health at Children's Wisconsin.
Herbst was @TheTable Wednesday night along with Tara Geiter, Director of Community Relations at Kohl's, to talk about the partnership with Children's.
A year ago, Children's Wisconsin opened the Craig Yabuki Mental Health Walk-in Clinic at their Milwaukee campus, and it has been a very busy place.
"We've seen over 1,000 kids already in that clinic, some of them have come as far as Manitowoc and Chicago. So, we know we need to open walk-in clinics in other communities so that they can be more accessible to kids and families," said Herbst.
Herbst says the benefit of having walk-in clinics is the immediate availability of health care services.
"They can simply walk in; they don't need a referral. They don't need to be screened in or out and they can walk in the door and say I feel like I'm having an urgent mental health care need, will you please help me and that's what we'll do."
Children's Wisconsin is getting help from Kohl's to open the three new clinics. The Menomonee Falls-based company is contributing $3 million to the effort.
"Children's has been a 20-plus-year partner of Kohl's. Over the years that we've worked together, we have given them $23 million, $5 million in the most recent grant and the very most recent one was $3 million," said Tara Geiter from Kohl's. "They were just the right partner to help us tackle this issue that's so important to the customers that we serve and even our associates within the community."
Watch the full conversation in the video at the top of this article.
Charles Benson and Shannon Sims interview key people in our community during TMJ4's @TheTable segment weeknights at 10 p.m.
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