Cuyahoga County plans to close its diversion center after a new behavioral crisis center opens in Cleveland’s Central neighborhood next year.  

The county has invested millions of its opioid settlement funds in operating the diversion center, which opened in 2021. It was initially billed as an alternative to jail for people in mental health or addiction crisis but later expanded to become a place where anyone in crisis could be screened for help. 

The county now plans to use $7 million of its opioid settlement money to help renovate the crisis center, which will be operated by The Centers in a former medical building on East 22nd Street. It will provide in-patient and outpatient mental health and addiction services – essentially a psychiatric emergency room that will open in fall 2026. The new facility will still accept patients diverted from the jail. 

In the years after it opened, the county’s diversion center saw less use than some public officials had hoped. The county later expanded the center’s mission, and family members or a person in crisis could contact the center to be admitted. That’s similar to how the new crisis facility in Central will operate, according to Brandy Carney, the county’s director of Public Safety and Justice Services. 

“It doesn’t make sense to have two centers open at the same time,” Carney told Signal Cleveland. She also told council members that the diversion center has increased in cost and is a challenge to sustain.

The county prefers the more central location of the new behavioral health center at the campus of the former St. Vincent Charity Hospital. It’s larger and more centrally located, Carney said. The county’s current diversion center operation is located at Oriana House near East 55th and Chester Avenue.

Carney and other officials shared their plans publicly to wind down the diversion center at a Cuyahoga County Council committee meeting Tuesday. 

The idea drew criticism from Council Member Michael Gallagher, who said the new behavioral crisis center isn’t a direct replacement for the diversion center. 

“It will not work as a diversion center,” Gallagher said. “It’s not going to help us out in the jail, which was the express purpose of diversion. This is a whole different ball of wax.”

One prominent group that advocated for the diversion center welcomed the news about the new Central facility. Greater Cleveland Congregations, a nonpartisan coalition of more than 30 religious groups, had pushed for the county to invest in mental health centers years ago, when city and county officials were queuing up money for renovations to the Cavaliers arena. 

Donna Weinberger, a member of GCC’s strategy team, said her organization supports the new behavioral health crisis center because it will provide the same services as the diversion center, plus more. 

“We think it’s probably going to be even more comprehensive and even closer to our original vision for the facility,” she said.

Diversion center versus behavioral health crisis center

The diversion center is operated by Oriana House, an Akron-based nonprofit. FrontLine Service, another nonprofit, screens every person over the phone before they come into the facility. Though initially the center only screened or treated a handful of people at a time, Carney said in the last year about 35 of the diversion center’s 50 beds are typically being used. But law enforcement referrals still don’t make up the majority of the referrals to the diversion center. In July 2023, less than one-quarter of referrals to the diversion center came from police, Documenters reported.  

The new behavioral crisis center would be open to walk-ins, Carney said. It would also accept patients who need higher levels of care – including people who have been involuntarily committed by judges. The diversion center only took people on a voluntary basis. 

“The crisis center will have dedicated rooms, areas, in case that’s a necessity where someone has 36 hours that they have to be under care,” Carney said. “And so we’re able to hold those individuals.”

The crisis center will also have outpatient counseling services available on-site, an urgent care that accepts adolescents and a pharmacy, services not available at the diversion center. 

Concerns, questions from council members

The county may also use opioid settlement money to pay The Centers to operate the new behavioral health center. Carney said she expects the contract to be about $12 million over three years. 

Council members wanted to know how the county would pay for the center’s operations once the one-time opioid settlement funds were used up.

“My real concern is, down the line, where the money is coming from,” Gallagher said. “Because we’re really good here in Cuyahoga County … [at] spending money you have but you really don’t have. I see this as a potential disaster down the road.”

Carney said earlier in the meeting that other groups like the county’s ADAMHS Board also have funding and that Medicaid reimbursement would help with sustainability. 

“We’ve been very clear from the beginning with The Centers and throughout this project that this is one-time money,” Carney said. “It’s not just our funding. There’s multiple funding providers for the project.”

Signal Cleveland Government Reporter Nick Castele contributed to this story.