 Crowing County is facing a large increase in their mental health and out-of-home placement costs. Sarah Winkelman spoke with community services to hear about the impact. The cost of treating mental health used to be split 50-50 between the state of Minnesota and the counties but in 2015 the cost was shifted making it 100 percent the county's responsibility for mental health care. We try and be very planful in Crowing County and really diligent about how we spend taxpayer dollars and with the state's shifting of costs makes it really difficult to do that. Since state hospitals have closed the community behavioral health center in Baxter is available but only offers 16 beds. A person is experiencing a mental health crisis and is in needing psychiatric care you know I believe they should be able to receive that they shouldn't be sitting in an emergency department emergency room waiting for a bed to open up at a psychiatric facility. Once determined that no more immediate care is needed the county pays for care until a transition is found for the patient. That cost is nearly $1,500 per patient per day for Crowing County. Create a solution so we don't have these long-term hospitalization stays and we can get people in the community locally where they belong. Another area where the county is seeing a large increase is out-of-home placement for children under 21 who are placed away from their homes for care or treatment. We are at our highest number of kids in care as of two weeks ago we ran a point in time report that showed that we had 181 kids in out-of-home placement. However community services cannot fix the issues alone they are counting on schools local law enforcement and local mental health services to tackle the issues together. We've had to be much more reactive in putting out those fires which is really unfortunate for our community. Reporting in Brainerd Sarah Winkleman, Lakeland News. Crowing County commissioners have signed a resolution supporting the state of Minnesota to again cover half the cost of mental health care. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.