California Area Office

IHS California Area Office is planning to build California’s first IHS-operated Youth Regional Treatment Centers (YRTC): IHS is the in process of establishing two new YRTCs in California; one in the North and one in the South. The YRTCs will provide culturally appropriate chemical dependency treatment services to American Indian/Alaska Native youth. Ultimately, these facilities will support the IHS mission, in partnership with Indian Tribes, to raise the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of the American Indian/Alaska Native population to the highest level.

Nationwide, IHS operates 5 YRTCs and the Tribes operate 6. The YRTCs share one mission – to provide quality holistic behavioral health care for American Indian/Alaska Native adolescents and their families in a substance free residential environment that integrates traditional healing, spiritual values, and cultural identification.

Section 704 of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (as amended, 1992) authorized IHS to construct and operate two YRTCs in California. In addition, IHS has received Congressional approval to spend $2.7 million of unobligated funds to purchase the sites on which to build the two 32-bed YRTCs. In 2010, the Area Office made significant progress in acquiring the properties. The YRTCs could be operational as soon as FY2014, pending property-acquisition and appropriations to design and construct the facilities