(The following press release was provided verbatim by Bucks County)
The County of Bucks on Wednesday held a ribbon cutting ceremony to unveil the newly constructed Diversion, Assessment, Restoration and Treatment (DART) Center in Doylestown Township.
Expected to begin accepting residents in the coming month, the 23,000 square-foot facility will serve adults with serious mental illness and co-occurring substance use issues who are involved with the criminal justice system.
“We have wanted to do something about this problem – to get people diverted from the criminal justice system,” said Commissioner Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia, LCSW. “But one piece of the puzzle was missing. It was this place.”
Through treatment and skill development, the Center will operate with the goals of diverting people from incarceration, reducing days of incarceration, reducing utilization of State institutions and reducing recidivism.
The DART Center houses three distinct tracks within this Residential Treatment Center for Adults:
“People with serious mental illness who are incarcerated spend significantly longer time being incarcerated than the general population,” said Donna Duffy Grimm, Administrator of Bucks County Behavioral Health/Developmental Programs (BH/DP). “We’re really hoping to impact those statistics.”
At full capacity, the DART can simultaneously serve up to 28 people.
Bucks County has hired the GEO Group to manage day-to-day operations at the DART Center, with oversight from Bucks County BH/DP.
“Right now, there’s a person, maybe more than one, who doesn’t even know that the DART Center exists. They are somewhere hard, in a cell somewhere, trying to get through another day [in a world] that has told them they’re too complicated to help,” said Dr. Mathew Abraham, Senior Director of Treatment and Program Development for GEO. “That person is going to find their way here, and when they do, they will walk through a door that says, ‘we see you, you are worth all of this.’”
Located on the grounds of the former Women’s Community Corrections Center, construction on the DART began in late 2023.
The total projected cost to build the facility is about $19.8 million. The County has paid for the construction with a combination of mostly federal and state funds, with about $1.8 million coming from the County’s General Fund.
“Today marks an important milestone for Bucks County, because we are not simply opening a building,” said General Services Director Bernard Griggs. “We are opening a pathway to a more compassionate, affective approach to mental health and criminal justice.”
General contracting work on the project was performed by Magnum, Inc., with architecture services by USA Architects, engineering by Carroll Engineering and Windward, electrical work by the Farfield Company, mechanical services by Integrity Mechanical, Inc., plumbing services by Vision Mechanical, fire protection work by Guy M. Cooper Mechanical and construction management by Jingoli.
Commissioner Vice Chair Bob Harvie, speaking Wednesday to a crowd of County officials and community stakeholders gathered to mark the DART’s opening, reflected on the questions that drove the facility’s planning years before its construction.
“What could we do on this spot that could make a difference?” he said. “What can we do on this spot that has meaning for people who really need help at a time that might be the lowest in their lives, that serves a purpose, and helps law enforcement and the criminal justice system appropriately handle people who shouldn’t be in a prison, but end up there because there is nowhere else to go?”
The DART Center is just the latest effort by the County to improve mental health services for Bucks County residents, especially those whose illness brings them into contact with the criminal justice system.
One ongoing effort is the award-winning Human Services Co-Responders Program, which embeds social workers in police departments to assist officers when encountering people in need of social services. Since launching in 2020 with the Bensalem Police Department, the program has expanded to serve more than two dozen police departments countywide.
In partnership with the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas, the County has also established specialized court programs to address the unique needs of qualifying offenders, including Recovery Court, Wellness Court and Veterans Treatment Court. These programs have been nationally recognized and are instructive for similar programs across the country.
