To pay for a new crisis center and deal with impending budget challenges, cuts are likely coming to Cuyahoga County’s existing network of addiction and mental health providers. 

Cuyahoga County’s ADAMHS board – which doles out money to local providers working on alcohol, drug addiction and mental health – is proposing an up-to-10% across-the-board cut to its 2026 budget. Some funding recipients may see an even larger cut, according to a proposed budget plan the ADAMHS board passed last Wednesday. 

At least two programs – a psychiatric emergency department in Cleveland Heights and a crisis stabilization unit on Cleveland’s West Side – will stop receiving any funding from the board in 2027. 

The ADAMHS board is aiming to have “one front door” for crisis services in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood. In the plan, the board acknowledged that the funding changes might hinder some programs’ capacity to serve people with addiction and mental health challenges. In other instances, the funding cuts could mean programs cease to exist altogether. 

“Unfortunately, I think they have to start planning as well,” said Scott Osiecki, CEO of the ADAMHS board, with regard to the organizations the board funds. “We’ve always told our providers we should not be the only source of their funding, right?”

The news has shaken up some providers, including FrontLine Services, which received about $5.6 million from the organization in 2025. A 10% cut would create a funding gap of about $500,000 that the agency wasn’t anticipating, said Corrie Taylor, the CEO of FrontLine Services.

“We know that there’s no funding source that we can think of that could fill that type of gap, especially in that short term of a timeframe,” Taylor said. “So, you know, we’re going to be creative.”

None of the proposed cuts are final. The ADAMHS board will vote on its final 2026 budget closer to the end of the year. 

A new funding landscape 

Osiecki said he’s wanted since 2023 to pare down the growing number of providers the ADAMHS board funds – the most of any board in the state, he said. But the 17-member board wasn’t always on the same page. 

But now, “we’re looking at a different funding environment,” he said. 

The hodgepodge of funding the ADAMHS board receives from the local, state and federal government is all under scrutiny. 

Some of the funding the board receives from the state has decreased under the budget passed in July, said Felicia Harrison, the chief financial officer of the ADAMHS board. The federal government passed significant cuts to Medicaid in a bill this summer. Though this hasn’t impacted ADAMHS yet, the board is preparing for them.

And the board is also gaming out scenarios in which the county’s health and human services levy is cut – though they don’t know this will occur. Cuts to the levy will have the biggest impact on whether the ADAMHS board will have to cut up to 10% of its budget or less.  

“If the HHS levy amount is cut drastically, we’d have to do at least 10%,” Harrison said.

A new crisis center requires more funding

In 2023, the ADAMHS board received $6.8 million from the State of Ohio to build a new behavioral health crisis center in the Central neighborhood. In 2024, the board announced that it was working with The Centers, a nonprofit behavioral healthcare provider, to operate the facility when it opens in 2026. It will act as a psychiatric emergency room that has space for more than 65 people experiencing various levels of mental health and addiction crises.     

Earlier this August, the Cuyahoga County Council was asked to chip in $7 million for the center’s construction. But several members of the county council have raised questions about how operations at the new behavioral health center will be funded in the long term. Before council members approved the $7 million investment, several asked for a more detailed operational funding plan. 

The plan the ADAMHS board passed last week provides some insight to the council: it ultimately hopes to put up to $10 million a year of its funding toward the new behavioral health crisis center. 

To afford that, the ADAMHS board plans to cut funding to two existing facilities. In 2025, the board gave $1.5 million to FrontLine Services’ Stricklin Crisis Stabilization Unit on Detroit Avenue and $4 million to MetroHealth’s Psychiatric Emergency Room, which opened last October. Those amounts will likely be reduced in 2026 and fall to zero in 2027 and beyond. 

The goal is to avoid “duplication of services,” Harrison said. The new behavioral health crisis center would combine the services that exist at the other two facilities into one building. 

“This is the front door to the system,” Osiecki said. “Right now, we don’t have one front door.”

For example, the new crisis center will have its own crisis stabilization unit – which provides urgent, short-term mental health care. It will also have 16 beds for psychiatric stabilization, 13 beds for detoxification and a pharmacy. 

He added that the psychiatric emergency room, which is located in Cleveland Heights, is not in an ideal location.

But the ADAMHS board will likely have to make further cuts in order to reach its $10 million goal. The agency plans to analyze other crisis services it funds to find efficiencies, Harrison said.

What does this mean for FrontLine and MetroHealth?

The ADAMHS board is the primary source of funding for the Stricklin Crisis Stabilization Unit, which can serve about 15 people at time, said Rick Oliver, FrontLine’s director of crisis services. 

Without it, he’s not sure how the center would stay open.

He hopes that the new behavioral health crisis center will offer the same crisis resources for residents. But his concern is that residents needing services may get lost as the move is made. One reason for the concern is that the existing Crisis Stabilization Unit has been around for about 50 years – so the surrounding community knows it’s there.  

“We certainly don’t support a duplication of services,” Oliver said. “…But you have to make sure that you don’t lose some of the people we’re trying to serve in the process.”

Taylor also brought up questions around the transition to the new behavioral health crisis center.  

“We know that even with a new program and building opening, it won’t be fully operational as of September 2026. There will be ramping up time,” Taylor said. “So in that transition time, what does it look like for client care?”

The Stricklin Crisis Stabilization Unit also has about 28 part-time and full-time employees. Oliver said they may look for work at the new crisis center. 

MetroHealth did not comment on the impact of the proposed cuts because no final decisions on funding have been made, a spokesperson said in an email to Signal Cleveland.