Acute Pyschiatric Care

Joy and Robert Wetzel Center for Children

For youth requiring Acute Care in an out-of-home placement, the Joy and Robert Wetzel Center for Children offers comprehensive, highly structured - stabilization services, including on-site psychiatry and intensive individual, family, and group therapy.

The Wetzel Center is one of the premier providers of acute mental health services for children in this region. With a family-centered approach, the Wetzel Center provides comprehensive, hospital-level psychiatric care for children in a comfortable, out-of-home setting. We created the Wetzel Center as a hospital diversion program, to give children and adolescents a more welcoming and age-appropriate setting for psychiatric care than a traditional hospital can provide.

The program consists of a latency (child) unit and an adolescent unit, allowing us to support youth ages 6-18, in developmentally appropriate therapeutic settings.

Specific services offered at the Wetzel Center include Intensive Community Based Acute Treatment (ICBAT) and Community Based Acute Treatment (CBAT). The Center is widely recognized for our safety, low readmission rates, and average length of stay, which are among the lowest in Massachusetts.

Referrals for acute residential services at the Wetzel Center are accepted 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Referrals are made by community crisis screening teams or Emergency Mental Health Services.