Aspire Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Services center coming to Lee County
Aspire to lease a county-owned building for the purpose of providing behavioral health services in Lee County
By Jennifer Parks
LEESBURG —Aspire Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Services is establishing an expanded presence by bringing a center to Lee County.
On Tuesday evening, the Lee County Board of Commissioners approved a motion to allow Aspire to lease a county-owned building for the purpose of providing behavioral health services inside of Lee County. Babs Hall, corporate compliance officer with Aspire, said the proposed site will be located near downtown Leesburg at 109 Leslie Highway.
Aspire’s goal is for the new site to be up and running before the start of the new school year in August.
Hall said the new location in Lee County will be utilized to provide outpatient mental health and addictive disease services for both children and adults during the first part of the day. In the afternoons, the facility will be used as a clubhouse for adolescents and young adults receiving outpatient behavioral health services.
The clubhouse is meant to be used as a tool to engage adolescents and young adults in fun activities while developing valuable life and coping skills. Clubhouse staff work closely with juvenile courts, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, Georgia Department of Family and Children Services, schools and families to build resiliency and provide early intervention to reduce the risk of substance abuse and out-of-home placements.
“It is our mission at Aspire to collaborate with our local county and community leaders as well as stakeholders in Southwest Georgia to improve access to affordable, quality behavioral health care in our communities,” Aspire CEO Kay Brooks Hatfield said.”We would like to express our sincere thanks to the Lee County Board of Commissioners for their partnership and support as our organization continues to expand and grow in rural south Georgia.”
An Aspire clubhouse is already in operation at 2500 Dawson Road in Albany, serving 136 children with some kind of mental health diagnosis.
Aspire currently provides clinical services for adolescents in each of the schools in Lee County. There are three schools that have Aspire offices onsite as part of the state’s APEX program, and officials said this will expand to five Lee schools in the upcoming school year.
In total, Aspire collaborates with 58 schools in an eight-county area, which includes Baker, Calhoun, Dougherty, Early, Lee, Miller, Terrell and Worth.
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