Madison Center: the county's center, across the river, and its end

1949 — the end in three steps, 2010–2012

For sixty years Mishawaka's public psychiatry was a South Bend corporation: Madison Center, founded in 1949 and seated from 1977 at 403 East Madison Street in South Bend, was the state-designated community mental health center for St. Joseph County, and Mishawaka stood inside its charge the whole of that time — the center's own 2010 account gives its service as five counties, St. Joseph among them, and its scale at the end was northern Indiana's largest: more than 1,200 employees by 2006, hospitals, clinics, and residential facilities, some 300,000 square feet of clinical space on its river campus. Its Mishawaka presence was a catchment, not a campus. The stipulated facility record of 2005 — the National Labor Relations Board's decision on the center's own case — lists fifteen facilities: the South Bend main campus and its other South Bend sites, the Juvenile Justice Center and three group homes among them, and regional clinics at LaPorte, Kingsford Heights, Michigan City, Valparaiso, and Portage in the west, and Plymouth, Elkhart, and Fort Wayne in the east. No Mishawaka facility stands in the list. Mishawaka residents were served across the river, and the center's one documented reach onto Mishawaka ground was its children's arm's screening team at Penn High School, told in the TeenScreen entry below. The end came in three documented steps, kept separate here as the record keeps them. First, the designation: effective at 5 p.m. on 24 September 2010, by mutual agreement announced on 7 September, Oaklawn Psychiatric Center of Elkhart County assumed the state-required duties of the designated center for St. Joseph County; the state's managed-care contract with Madison was terminated simultaneously with Oaklawn's new agreement, Oaklawn leased space at Madison to continue the community-based services, and inpatient services were expressly not affected. Second, the wards: in March 2011 Memorial Hospital purchased Madison's inpatient assets, some ninety beds, and inpatient psychiatry passed to the new Memorial Epworth Center on the Niles Avenue ground. Third, the organization itself: the county home's timeline records under 2012 that "Madison Center closed due to financial strain," while this history's South Bend Hospitals record carries its outpatient and children's services continuing at directory size after 2011 — the two accounts printed side by side in the South Bend file and not averaged here. For Mishawaka, the practical meaning of the three steps was a change of letterhead across the river: the designated center's duties, the inpatient wards, and eventually the name all moved, while the service Mishawaka residents used continued in the same South Bend buildings under new operators — and, from the end of 2012, under a new operator on Mishawaka ground as well.

Sources:

1. Madison Center / Oaklawn Psychiatric Center, joint announcement of 7 September 2010 (PR Newswire) — Madison's founding in 1949 and five-county service; the designation transfer effective 5 p.m., 24 September 2010; the contract termination and new agreement; the lease of space at Madison; and inpatient services expressly unaffected.
2. National Labor Relations Board, Madison Center, Inc., Case 25-RC-10299 (decision of 27 September 2005) — the stipulated facility record: fifteen facilities, the South Bend main campus and sites, and the regional clinics of the West Region (LaPorte, Kingsford Heights, Michigan City, Valparaiso, Portage) and East Region (Plymouth, Elkhart, Fort Wayne); no Mishawaka facility among them.
3. South Bend section of this history (Mental Health Institutions and Hospitals) — Madison's founding and scale (the IUSB commencement biography of executive director Marsha Brook: 75 employees in 1978 to more than 1,200; the city's 2003 plan: six buildings, some 300,000 square feet); the March 2011 Memorial purchase of the inpatient assets and the Epworth Center; and the 2012 closure line of the county timeline against the Hospitals record's directory continuation, printed there as they stand.