Eliada opens Leicester counseling center to boost child mental health care

Children and families in Buncombe County now have a new place to turn for counseling in Leicester, where Eliada opened a center aimed at filling a stubborn local gap in mental health care. The nonprofit said the new site is built to serve children, families and groups with affordable, high-quality, trauma-informed therapy, including full outpatient behavioral health services covered by Medicaid.

The opening comes as Western North Carolina families continue to face long waits, limited provider choices and growing demand after Hurricane Helene and the pandemic pushed more children into crisis. Andrew D’Onofrio, Eliada’s president and CEO, said the need is especially acute for young people involved in child welfare and for families with limited financial resources. Eliada said the new center will not fix North Carolina’s broader behavioral health shortage, but it should expand access in Buncombe County for residents who have had the fewest options.

The scale of the problem remains severe. The North Carolina Institute of Medicine says behavioral health disorders affect one in five adults in the state and one in six youths ages 6 to 17. Providers meet only about 13% of the state’s mental health needs, and North Carolina ranks last nationally in access to behavioral health care. State leaders have also pointed to Medicaid reimbursement as a barrier, especially for clinicians who do not accept lower-paying public insurance.

Eliada’s expansion lands in a county where the safety net has been under strain. The nonprofit, founded in 1903, already serves more than 600 children each year through its education and mental health programs, and D’Onofrio said roughly 75% to 80% of those children live below the poverty line. That history makes the Leicester counseling center more than a new building; it is an added local entry point for families who have struggled to find care close to home.

The broader state response shows how deep the crisis has become. NCDHHS launched its Child Behavioral Health Dashboard on Feb. 6, 2024, and said more than 50 children were sleeping in emergency departments each week because appropriate behavioral-health services were not available. After Helene, the agency announced $2.9 million in federal crisis-counseling funding on Oct. 24, 2024, and Buncombe County added Helene recovery mental-health resources that include 988 and the Hope4NC helpline.

Even with those efforts, local leaders have kept building. Buncombe County and its municipalities adopted a Helene Recovery Plan on Nov. 18, 2025, with 114 projects. Eliada’s new center now adds another in-county option, one that could make a practical difference for families who have been waiting for care in a system that has too often left them behind.