Children’s Wisconsin announced today that it will open a mental health walk-in clinic in Kenosha by the end of the year.
The service will be provided at the Children’s Wisconsin Kenosha Clinic, located at 6809 122
nd Ave. along the west side of I-94 in Kenosha. The specific start date for the service will be determined by the recruitment and training of needed staff and providers.
Children’s Wisconsin said the new mental health walk-in clinic in Kenosha is being made possible by a $3 million commitment from
Kohl’s, announced in May, to support the opening of mental health walk-in clinics. Children’s Wisconsin plans to open additional mental health walk-in clinics in the coming years.
The Kenosha Mental Health Walk-In Clinic will offer similar services to those provided at the Craig Yabuki Mental Health Walk-In Clinic on the Children’s Wisconsin main campus at the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa. That clinic opened in March of 2022. In the first year the clinic was open, it supported more than 1,500 kids from Wisconsin and northern Illinois. About 10% of those families came from Kenosha, Walworth and Racine counties, a factor in choosing Kenosha as the location for the second clinic, according to Children’s Wisconsin.
“We chose Kenosha as our next walk-in clinic for mental and behavioral health services because we know families need that care closer to home,” said
Amy Herbst, vice president of mental and behavioral health at Children’s Wisconsin. “We have seen about 150 families make the drive from Kenosha, Racine or Walworth counties to our Milwaukee campus. Now we’ll be available to them in their community and providing them care closer to home. We have about a hundred kids on our wait list right now, who live in Kenosha County who are waiting to see a therapist. And that doesn’t even mention the hundreds of kids who are on other waiting lists in the community. We will be able to provide them with immediate care that they need in the moment, and not have them sitting on a waiting list.”
The walk-in clinics provide immediate mental health support to kids 5-18 years old and are staffed with licensed therapists and social workers. The clinics offer a therapy session, safety evaluation and support in connecting families to long-term resources either through Children’s Wisconsin or in the community. The clinic provides support until those long-term resources are in place.
“The opening of the walk-in clinic will help families who have not accessed mental health services before, who can’t arrange an appointment with their established mental health provider or who need support during the evening and weekend and their established provider isn’t available,” Herbst said.
Children’s Wisconsin says the new Kenosha walk-in clinic is its latest commitment to “ensure that every child’s mental health is as important as their physical health.” In 2019, Children’s Wisconsin made a 5-year, $150 million commitment to address the mental and behavioral health crisis facing Wisconsin kids.
