A new crisis center for people in need of emergency mental health care is one step closer to opening after a key source of funding was put in place.
The Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services board (ADAMHS), the public entity overseeing mental health in Cuyahoga County, on Wednesday approved $4.5 million from its budget for the facility’s operations next year.
The investment consumes a significant portion of the board’s annual budget, but ADAHMS officials viewed the financial commitment as essential to opening the new facility. The crisis center, recently named the Glick Recovery Campus, is already under renovation in the Central neighborhood and is set to open in September.
“For residents, the agreement is intended to create a more accessible and coordinated crisis response system,” Jason Joyce, the CEO of ADAMHS, said at Wednesday’s meeting. “The goal is to provide a centralized point for access for behavioral health crises while reducing unnecessary reliance on emergency departments and law enforcement.”
Joyce, who joined the board about five months ago, earlier questioned whether the agency could afford it, leaving the center’s future in doubt. Before he arrived, the board had promised to spend $10 million a year on the crisis center, but Joyce said that such a large commitment would force the board to cut support it provides to other mental health and addiction providers in the community.
Under the agreement approved Wednesday night, the ADAMHS board will give $4.5 million to the new crisis center in 2027. Joyce predicts the board will still need to make cuts to other service providers but now expects them to be smaller.
The new deal to commit $4.5 million – instead of $10 million – to the new crisis center was cited as a key reason board members approved it.
“$10 million a year was going to draw too much away from other programs, which wouldn’t have been good,” said James Dixon, the ADAMHS’ board vice chair, who supported the new funding agreement for the center.
This building formerly owned by St. Vincent Charity Medical Center is slated to house a new behavioral health crisis center in Central. Credit: Michael Indriolo/Signal Cleveland/CatchLight Local
Uncertainty remains around funding and diversion center
Uncertainty remains around a separate piece of funding for the new crisis center: opioid settlement dollars from Cuyahoga County. This money is needed to cover about 20% of the crisis center’s annual operations, but the county council has not voted to approve its use yet.
The county’s opioid settlement dollars currently fund the community’s diversion center, a facility on East 55th Street that was set up in 2021 as a location where police could drop off people experiencing mental health or addiction crises. It later expanded to help people coming from other agencies or who walked in. The diversion center is set to close after the dollars shift to the new crisis center, county leaders have previously said.
Leaders of the diversion center have expressed worry, though, that closing the diversion center will mean a net loss of residential beds for people with mental health crises who need services for days at a time. The new crisis center will have some residential beds, but fewer. Instead, it will add more short-term chairs, where residents can stay for up to 23 hours to receive medication and therapy.
“It is unrealistic to assume that additional ‘chairs’ providing 23-hour observation will meet the complex needs of individuals who are amidst mental health and substance use crisis,” wrote Dr. Megan Testa, the medical director at the diversion center and FrontLine Service, in an email to the ADAMHS board before Wednesday’s vote.
What the new crisis center offers
For years, Cuyahoga County, local agencies and mental health advocates have been searching for more effective alternatives to help people in a mental health crisis, who often end up in jail or emergency rooms.
County officials paid for the diversion center, while the ADAMHS board funded a crisis unit on the city’s West Side and a psychiatric emergency department. The new mental health crisis center is likely to shift funding away from all three of these facilities. (The psychiatric emergency department closed at the end of last year following announcements about the proposed funding shift.)
ADAMHS board member Dr. Charles Garven described the new crisis center as a better deal – providing more services for the same investment.
The new crisis center will have a first floor with 40 crisis receiving chairs, which are essentially recliners where patients can receive medication and services for up to 23 hours. The second floor will have residential beds where patients can stay for days at a time, if need be, and beds for substance use detox. The third floor will have outpatient primary care and mental health care.
Eric Morse, CEO of The Centers, gave members of Cuyahoga County Council a virtual tour of the proposed new crisis center and the crisis receiving chairs during a meeting last September.