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Updated as of September 1, 2026:
After extensive review and consideration, CCC has made the difficult decision to close the Letty Owings Center (LOC) effective October 31, 2026. Since opening in 1989, LOC has supported thousands of women and their children through residential substance use disorder treatment.
To learn more, please review the FAQ below or view the PDF version.
For decades, Letty has been far more than a program. It has been a place of hope, healing, and second chances. It has been a place where women have rebuilt their lives, where families have been reunited, and where babies have had the opportunity to begin life in safer, healthier circumstances. Countless staff members have poured their hearts into this work, walking alongside clients through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.
It has been CCC’s honor and privilege to serve this population of women, children and families. The impact of this program cannot be measured simply by numbers or years of operation. It lives in the lives that have been changed, the recoveries supported, the families that found hope, and the countless moments of compassion that took place within these walls.
To CCC’s clients and families, thank you for trusting us to be part of your journeys. To our community partners, supporters, and donors thank you for standing alongside Letty over the years.
While this chapter is coming to an end, the impact of the Letty Owings Center will continue to be felt for generations to come.
To learn more about our decision, please review the comprehensive FAQ below which you can also view and download as a PDF.
Over the past five years, LOC has served clients with increasingly complex needs, often requiring more medical, psychiatric, and care coordination services, as well as longer stays to achieve stabilization. While LOC has increased staffing, psychiatric services, and care coordination to respond to these needs, the program still requires significant investment and additional resources to provide the level of care this population needs.
Over the same five-year period, the cost of running LOC increased by 52%, while funding opportunities have actually decreased. Despite CCC’s best efforts, the LOC program ended FY26 with a measurable financial deficit and is expected to have a financial deficit more than double the size in FY27. CCC completed a thorough review to better understand why the program is no longer financially sustainable and identified several systemic factors. These include gaps in funding for residential treatment services for pregnant and parenting women, increasing clinical complexity, limited access to higher levels of care, workforce challenges, and growing unfunded demands related to parenting support and child welfare.
Together, these challenges have made LOC more costly and difficult to operate, while funding has not kept up with the level of care clients need and that CCC would like to provide. As a result, CCC leadership has made the difficult decision to close the program.
This decision was not made lightly. Over the past five months, CCC leaders have carefully reviewed the program to understand its challenges and long-term sustainability. Starting with the annual budget planning process, LOC was identified as facing significant and immediate financial challenges in FY27. This kicked off a thorough review of the program – a “root cause analysis” – looking at funding, staffing, client needs, program design, regulatory requirements, and client outcomes. The outcome was a list of 30 underlying issues, a market analysis of similar programs, and a ten-year financial analysis.
After completing the root cause analysis, CCC leadership determined that there were insufficient resources to address these underlying systemic issues and align the level of care with the needs of this population. As a result, CCC leaders spent the next two months exploring alternatives to the program’s closure. This included conversations with the Oregon Health Authority, HealthShare, and leaders of other organizations that operate similar programs to determine whether another provider could continue LOC’s services. Combined with the root cause analysis, and with no viable continuity of care partner alternative identified, CCC was left with the difficult decision to close the program.
Unfortunately, increasing funding alone would not have been enough to keep LOC open.
The program would have required significant changes to its care model, staffing, and services to meet the increasing clinical complexity in this population. To sustain these changes, state regulations would also need to be redesigned to create a programming designation that adequately funds a treatment model tailored to the needs of high-acuity pregnant and parenting women. In addition, broad overhauls are needed to the child welfare network to improve partnership and support for child outcomes.
Over time, LOC has taken on responsibilities that extend beyond its original scope, including parenting education and skills development, transportation, care coordination of both parents and children, and child welfare-related services. Furthermore, the responsibility of caring for the children as “patients” has increasingly become a requirement for this service model. As a Federally Qualified Health Center System, CCC is unable to add the scope of pediatric care for a single site without expanding that care across all our health centers. We are simply unable to make that significant of a shift in our scope and operationalize caring for children. In parallel, because most other health centers in the region (those which are not Healthcare for the Homeless centers) care for children in their scope, the probability of an FQHC scope expansion being approved is low. Even if an FQHC scope expansion was approved, the effort to operationalize this change would require a large investment of resources.
Without these major changes both inside and outside the program, LOC would have continued to face challenges related to funding, quality of care, client outcomes, and safety.
Unfortunately, yes, Laura’s Place will also be closing. Laura’s Place is integrated with LOC and serves as a supportive transitional housing facility for clients who have graduated from LOC. Without LOC, Laura’s Place will not have any clients, staff, or funding to remain open.
Yes. Once CCC completed our internal root cause analysis, we consulted with and informed OHA, HealthShare, and CEOs of similar behavioral health organizations in hopes of finding collaborative solutions and transition partnerships to ensure continuity of care for this population.
Our priority is ensuring current clients can complete treatment or transition safely to appropriate services. As clients complete their programs over the coming months, the number of people served at LOC and Laura’s Place will gradually decrease, and staffing and services will be adjusted accordingly.
At this time, we expect the program’s closure process to be largely complete by the end of October 2026.
Pregnant and parenting adults who require ongoing residential treatment at the ASAM 3.7, 3.5, or 3.1 level will continue to have access to care through CCC’s 16 x Burnside Recovery Center. Although children and infants cannot reside at the facility, we remain committed to supporting our clients’ residential behavioral health needs and providing onsite child visitation opportunities. As we prepare for LOC’s closure, we are collaborating closely with partners, referral sources, payers, and funders to support a thoughtful and seamless transition for clients and families.
The decision to close LOC is permanent. However, CCC remains committed to advocating for pregnant and parenting women with substance use disorders. We will continue working with partners across the community and sharing what we’ve learned to help strengthen services and improve care for this population.
Yes, our goal is to stay open long enough for all actively enrolled clients to successfully complete treatment or decide to transition to another program.
We paused new admissions in July in response to high client acuity and resource constraints in our current care model. The pause also provided time to review the effectiveness of our current workflows and operating procedures, and to identify what changes might be needed to improve the quality of services and sustainability of the program. Referral sources were notified in July that no new referrals would be accepted for the foreseeable future.
Over the last five years, LOC has served an average of 100 clients per year. Its closure will reduce the number of residential treatment beds where children can reside onsite with pregnant and parenting women receiving treatment. We expect access to these specialized services to become more limited. This is one of the reasons CCC prioritized finding another provider that could continue operating LOC and, when no provider was able to take on the program, why the decision to close Letty Owings was so difficult. CCC will continue its advocacy with state and local authorities and health system partners to improve system investments in the continuum of care for this specialty population.
While no program will specifically replicate the LOC model, pregnant and parenting women can continue to receive SUD residential care at the following programs in the state:
Since announcing our decision to close LOC, we have experienced an outpouring of support from the community, along with many questions. Community members, partners, legislators, and donors have asked what they can do to help keep LOC open.
We are deeply grateful for the extraordinary care, concern, and love being shown for this cherished program and the women and families it has served.
CCC’s decision has not changed. Over the past several years, the complexity and acuity of care required by women entering LOC have grown beyond the scope of services CCC can safely provide and beyond what these women and their children deserve.
While LOC is closing, CCC remains steadfast in its commitment to pregnant and parenting women with substance use disorders. We will continue to advocate for this population, collaborate with community partners, and share the lessons learned through decades of operating LOC to help strengthen services and improve outcomes for pregnant and parenting women across Oregon.
CCC pledges to actively support future advocacy efforts aimed at developing treatment options that better meet the needs of pregnant and parenting women requiring residential substance use disorder treatment. This includes exploring models that provide 4.0 ASAM* hospital-level care for mothers and infants and Medically Managed Level 3.7 ASAM residential services with integrated supports for both mother and baby. Meeting these needs will require more than program replacement. It calls for a comprehensive redesign of the system of care. *American Society of Addiction Medicine
We foresee this work will be led primarily by the Oregon Perinatal Collaborative, the Project Nurture Collaborative, and our region’s coordinated care organization, in partnership with the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Human Services. CCC is committed to being an engaged partner in those efforts.
Today, women requiring Level 3.7 services can access that care through CCC’s 16 x Burnside Recovery Center and Fora Health, respectively. However, these programs are not currently designed to preserve the mother-baby relationship during the earliest and often most critical phase of a mother’s treatment journey.
The community’s response to this decision has reinforced what CCC has always known: pregnant and parenting women need specialized, family-centered treatment options. While LOC’s chapter is coming to a close, the work of building a more effective and sustainable system of care must continue.
Every voice matters.
Contact your Multnomah County, Clackamas County, Washington County and state elected officials and urge them to prioritize the creation and long-term funding of programs that support women with children, especially those facing housing instability, behavioral health challenges, or other barriers to stability.
