With referrals significantly down and state reimbursement rates decreasing, Ruth Dykeman Children’s Center on Lake Burien has closed two out of its three residential programs.

Only 11 children now live at the site. They are part of the center’s residential program for 6 to 12-year-olds. Two other children recently were discharged.

But the 12 beds for adolescent boys and four beds for young women, 18-22, transitioning from foster care to independence are now empty.

The center has housed troubled children since Judge King Dykeman moved his Ruth School for Girls to the 8-½ acre site on Lake Burien in 1931.

Judge Dykeman had observed that many of the young women he saw in court needed support outside the home but there were no appropriate services for them.

He started the school in the Ravenna district in 1921 and named it after his daughter.

With the residential program winding down, could this prime property on Burien’s only large lake be sold as residential property? This greatly concerns the center’s lakefront neighbors who worry about public access to the lake, located next to downtown Burien.

“We have no plans to sell the land as we’d all prefer to keep the campus intact,” declared Alice Braverman, vice president of development and community relations for Navos.

Navos, which has built a new mental health center at South 136th St. and Ambaum Blvd. S.W., merged with the children’s center in November of 2010.

Instead of selling, Braverman said, Navos wants to increase services at the Dykeman campus.

“We want to make the site more important,” Braverman noted. “We want to expand consistent with needs and the new (health care) environment.”

In a letter to partners and supporters, David Johnson, Navos CEO, wrote, “A plan will be finalized in January that outlines how we will further develop and diversify children’s services at RDCC and at our other sites so we may continue to meet the mental health and wellness needs of the community and to be responsible and mindful stewards of your support.”

Braverman noted that many other area human services organizations have reduced their residential programs for young people.

The new national and state priority for services is to provide “wrap-around” services in the home, with extended family or with other “safe caregivers,” according to Braverman. Comprehensive services are provided to those taking care of the troubled child. Placing the child in a residential program outside of the home is now a last resort.

Braverman admits that part of the changing priority is because of less funding.

But she emphasizes that Dykeman is still going to be providing services.

She said 311 families used outpatient programs at the campus with another 200 families served at local schools.

Dykeman had lost an alcohol and drug treatment grant for adolescents, according to Braverman. But with the Navos merger, the service has been reestablished as the only such program in the area.