Company Profile
Direct Care and Treatment
Company Overview
The only system of its kind, size and scope in Minnesota, Direct Care and Treatment (DCT) occupies a unique place in the state's mental health continuum of care and has a unique role. We serve patients and clients with complex conditions that other behavioral health care providers cannot or will not serve.
Our Mission: We support meaningful lives through specialized behavioral health services others do not provide.
Our Vision: A Minnesota where everyone receives the behavioral health services they need.
Our Values: Person-centeredness, quality, safety, partnership, equity, and accountability.
DCT operates a variety of treatment programs as well as residential and vocational services for people with serious mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, substance use disorders and more. We also operate the nation's largest secure treatment program for civilly committed sex offenders.
Each year, more than 12,000 people receive services in DCT's inpatient treatment facilities, special care dental clinics, group homes and other residential and vocational settings. Services are delivered at more than 150 locations statewide by more than 5,400 full- and part-time staff.
Company History
Direct Care and Treatment's history spans nearly 170 years. It started when Minnesota became a state in 1858. Back then, the Legislature saw an immediate need for a place to care for people with mental illnesses, substance use disorders and developmental disabilities. However, with no means to provide the services, state lawmakers contracted with the state of Iowa to take patients from Minnesota. The arrangement lasted until 1866, when Minnesota opened its first state hospital in St. Peter.
The hospital opened in a temporary location that year, and a sprawling facility was soon constructed on a 800-acre campus. By the end of 1872, 1,050 patients were residents there. A portion of that original Kirkbride facility still stands on the St. Peter campus and is home to the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center Museum, which contains hundreds of artifacts and photos from the facility's bygone eras.
Expansion continued for nearly a century as 10 more state hospitals were built in communities across Minnesota:
1879: Faribault and Rochester
1890: Fergus Falls
1900: Anoka and Hastings
1911: St. Paul (Gillette)
1912: Willmar
1925: Cambridge
1938: Moose Lake
1958: Brainerd
The massive facilities and sprawling campuses were communities unto themselves. Many had farming operations that provided both work and food for patients and staff. Farming operations continued into the 1960s. While some patients eventually recovered and could return home, a great many patients spent much or most of their lives in the facilities.
Treatment for mental illness as we know it today didn't really exist back then. For nearly a century, there were no medications for treating mental illness, so the facilities focused on controlling patient behaviors. This led to the overuse of restraint, seclusion as well as inhumane and abusive treatment of patients. Many facilities were tragically overcrowded and understaffed and conditions in some were appalling.
By the late 1940s, a wave of reforms that swept the nation gradually began moving Minnesota toward deinstitutionalization in favor of community based services and treatment for people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities. The sprawling campuses gradually were closed or repurposed. The transformation took decades and in many respects is still underway.
Today, Direct Care and Treatment is a modern behavioral health care system that has the clinical expertise, staff and facilities to care for patients and clients with complex conditions in safe, secure and therapeutic settings across Minnesota.
Notable Accomplishments / Recognition
Help Healing Hope
That’s what we’re all about at Direct Care and Treatment, Minnesota’s state-operated behavioral health care system.
We provide expert care for people with mental illnesses and other complex conditions who cannot be served in other settings.
Benefits
Great Reasons to Work for Direct Care and Treatment
There are lots of great reasons to join the team at Direct Care and Treatment. Let's start with these:
A retirement plan that few other employers can match. That's right, an honest-to-goodness state pension that will provide guaranteed income in retirement. And you thought that kind of financial security went the way of the dinosaurs.
Competitive salaries and benefits
Low-cost medical and dental coverage
Generous vacation and sick leave
12 paid holidays each year
Positions Available
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