County to close its only youth shelter this fall

The only local youth shelter will be closing its doors this fall.

Located in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Cloquet, the Carlton Youth Shelter, run by Lutheran Social Services, will close by Oct. 1 and the county will utilize a different LSS shelter in Duluth.

Carlton County Public Health and Human Services director Dave Lee said the main reason for the closure is low usage: the average number of children using the shelter has dropped to less than one person per day.

Services for Carlton County families will now be provided at the new LSS Bethany facility in the Morgan Park area of Duluth, which includes the Bethany Crisis Shelter and a family resource center.

Two shelter placements for Carlton County families will be guaranteed, as the shelter also serves St. Louis County. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is also planning to open its own youth shelter in Brookston.

During Monday’s Carlton County board meeting, Cloquet commissioner Tom Proulx questioned the cost of the move. Lee answered that the current cost per day for the facility was running about $1,300, adding that closing the shelter would cut that figure by half, or as much as two-thirds.

The decision to close the shelter in Cloquet was driven primarily by the county, but with support from LSS, confirmed Dawn Shykes, senior director of youth, children and family services for LSS in Minnesota.

“Regardless of whether there are kids there or not, we still have to staff and run the building, keep utilities going and stay ready for whatever happens,” Shykes said. “It’s hard to maintain a facility where you have low numbers, and hard as a county to justify continuing to pay that money without utilizing the beds.”

Lee added the larger Morgan Park facility has more to offer. Bethany has 15 beds versus 10 beds for boys and girls in Cloquet. Also, families that need supervised visits can use the adjacent resource center. The building is very “homelike,” Shykes said.

“This is a great opportunity for Carlton County families to be able to use the new Bethany Crisis Shelter,” she said. “Activities are scheduled for the children twice a day. This is a crisis shelter and only for short-term placement. They have a strong staff available to handle the transition back home or into a placement in their home neighborhoods.”

Shykes said the goal is to have families in the shelter the shortest time possible. A strong, proactive approach to each case and the success of new human services efforts such as the Assertive Community Treatment teams — which provide community-based treatment to adults with serious and persistent mental illness — have resulted in keeping more families in crisis safe and in their homes, rather than depending on crisis shelters.

The length of stay in shelter varies from a few days to a few months, she added, depending on the challenges children and families are facing at that time, and where the child will be going after placement. The maximum stay at Bethany is 90 consecutive days, she said.

“Sometimes kids are waiting to get into a residential treatment facility, and that can mean a couple months wait,” she said. “Other times, a family crisis might be handled in a few days, or they might have to wait for a spot in long-term foster care for the entire family, so the kids can stay together.”

They want to keep families together and work on preventing problems that affect the home, she said.

“We continue to work hard to individualize each family’s needs; the goal is to keep children in their own schools,” Shykes said. “We have transportation available to transport the children and work out a schedule for them to participate in extracurricular activities.”

Seven LSS staff will be displaced with the closure of the Cloquet shelter.

“I’m really proud of the work we’ve done, especially in the last two years with Covid and being chronically short-staffed,” said Kris Papas, who will work her last day at the shelter on Sunday, Aug. 28. “We have provided excellent care to children and teens and crisis situations.”

Lee said he is working on ensuring good services for Carlton County rural families in crisis who may need the Bethany services. Bethany will provide transportation services to Cloquet, Carlton, Esko, and Wrenshall schools. Moose Lake, Barnum and Cromwell school youth will be transported using a private service that is being used throughout Northeastern Minnesota.

“Transportation of school-age children will not change,” Lee said in a phone interview. “It will take more time and, of course, be more costly due to the increased mileage.”

He estimated that about a quarter of children needing help come from the rural areas of Carlton County.

Carlton County presently owns the building, originally a duplex, that houses the Cloquet Youth Shelter. The county has not determined what it will do with the building, which is located in a residential area near Churchill Elementary School and could be made into a family housing unit or units.

The commissioners voted unanimously to close the shelter at the adjourned meeting Monday, Aug. 22.

Pine Knot News editor Jana Peterson contributed to this story.