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New director, John Butgereit, leads North Central Human Service Center in Minot

Service center makes care transitions

The North Central Human Service Center in Minot has seen its share of transitions in the past year, including the installation of a new director.

John Butgereit started as the new regional director in May after former director Laurie Gotvaslee retired. He had joined North Central as the transition independence program manager, a position he held briefly before becoming a therapist at the center in 2014 and clinical team lead in 2015.

The clinical background he brings to the position gives him a framework that’s been helpful in the job, Butgereit said. He has maintained some involvement on the clinical side as a team lead for one of the center’s treatment teams this fall, but he said he enjoys learning the administrative side.

“We’ve had great support from statewide leadership, and they’ve been here in person visiting and offering support the best they can. So I’m excited. I’m challenged. I think I’ve learned a lot. I found it’s a hard job but it’s a good job,” he said.

A Minot native, Butgereit obtained his master’s degree in counseling in Idaho, where he then worked as a therapist at a psychiatric hospital. Family connections brought him back to Minot.

Three days before COVID-19 impacted in-person activities in healthcare, he became statewide telehealth coordinator for the regional centers. During the pandemic, his task was to help with the transition to a telehealth platform.

“It was a rapid progression, but I think we ended up coming through it OK. I was learning the statewide system and all the different players involved and all the different human service centers — trying to make sure that we were getting clients seen at the same time. But I actually kind of liked it. I tend to thrive off of chaos,” he laughed.

Butgereit said his interest in Minot and in the work of North Central led to his desire to serve as center director.

“I felt that this place was doing important work that needed to continue to grow, and I just felt like it was a good chance for me to be a part of that,” he said.

The delivery of services has changed tremendously in the past year, he noted. The previous operations model had clients individually accessing specialty services, such as therapy, addiction or children’s services. Now, the center has taken a team approach in providing integrated services through a wraparound model.

“At the same time, we really started to redefine who we serve. In the past we’ve seen folks that didn’t necessarily have even a moderate to severe mental health or substance use disorder. Basically, if you were a person in need, we wanted to make sure you were seen, so we would,” Butgereit said.

Although North Central continues to serve anyone who is financially vulnerable, the focus is on clients with high-moderate to extreme deficits in their daily functioning as a result of their mental illnesses or substance abuse.

“We’ve also changed our clinical approach,” Butgereit said. “We’re taking a skills-based approach, so folks aren’t going to get traditional long-term therapy from us any longer. We’re going to have short-term interventions that focus on implementing skills, training those skills, practicing the skills through what we call skills restoration or integration.

“As soon as we help them to achieve their goal and have an improvement in their level of functioning, we’re looking for community partners that can keep working with them, because their severity rating has dropped down,” he added.

North Central contracts with RSI for residential treatment through three homes. That treatment is shorter term than in the past because of the skills-based approach.

“We also have what we call Open Arms, which is our crisis residential unit. That is intended for folks who really just need the intermediate step between hospitalization and community,” Butgereit said. “They usually come in, again, for a shorter stay.”

The center is developing what it calls the Stand, Sit, Lay model, Butgereit said. The “Stand” provides a few hours of intervention to enable a client or other community resident to go back into the community. The “Sit” provides a place where people might stay an hour or two to connect with support. The “Lay” brings a person into a crisis residential unit for up to a few days for stabilization.

Butgereit said the move to get people out of treatment units and into the community is designed to increase their engagement. In the past, the treatment model directed a lot of services toward a client with high needs before the client was ready. The briefer, skills-based training is more effective in the long term, he said.

As part of the center’s crisis services, North Center operates a mobile response unit, working closely with law enforcement and other first responders. The unit may go directly to the hospital emergency room to respond to someone needing services.

Residents also can call 211 if they are having a mental health or addiction emergency. Based on that phone assessment, North Central, which is on call 24 hours a day, may be notified to respond.

Butgereit said the community still has a lot of growing to do to provide the level of support needed for people with mental illness and substance use. Wait times for help remain high, and more sources of help are needed.

Butgereit is a registered supervisor, which enables him to supervise counselors working toward clinical licensure. It’s a certification for which there is a shortage, and he is the only registered supervisor currently at North Central.

“I think we have and will continue to do a lot of work to encourage people and find opportunities for them to serve people with mental illness in the community. As far as what we have at the center, I think we’re positioned well to serve that moderate to high risk or high-impaired clientele. We want to continue to grow opportunities to transition them out into community services,” Butgereit said.

Coming out of the 2021 legislative session, Butgereit feels good about the state resources available to the center for serving its region.

“We’re still learning and growing and trying to adjust our staffing to make sure that we’re meeting the needs, so I think we’ll do a lot of evolving over the biennium. I don’t know where we’ll be at the end of the biennium, but I can tell you going into the biennium, we’re in a good place to start,” he said.

Prairie Profile is a weekly feature profiling interesting people in our region. We welcome suggestions from our readers. Call Regional Editor Eloise Ogden at 857-1944 or call 1-800-735-3229. You also can send email suggestions to eogden@minotdailynews.com.

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