By next summer, Maureen Malavé plans to have teams of paramedics and social workers — instead of police officers — responding to some mental health crisis calls in Cleveland.
That’s the goal Malavé set for Cleveland’s new Community Crisis Response Bureau, which she was tapped to lead in June. The bureau, which is part of the Division of Emergency Medical Services, was created by Tanisha’s Law.
The law was named for Tanisha Anderson, who died in police custody in 2014. Advocates of the law have remained involved in its implementation, and Malavé told Signal Cleveland that she welcomes their input.
Malavé is a Cleveland Heights native and public health expert who spent 10 years working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), mostly in Africa, and about the same amount of time at New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Her new role in Cleveland presents an opportunity to “take all of the program management and coalition building that I’ve done over my career in different settings and bring it to this new, really important initiative,” she said.
Malavé’s task is building out the city’s care response system, which does not involve an armed police officer. She is working now with the city’s IT department on an analysis of 911 calls to determine where and during what hours to launch a care response pilot program later this fall.
She also hopes that before the end of the year she can assign a social worker to the 911 call center. Columbus and other cities have found that as much as 30% of crisis calls can be resolved on the phone, she said.
Finding a vendor to build a database to keep track of all of the bureau’s call responses and follow-ups is another near-term priority. Tanisha’s Law requires the bureau to maintain a public online dashboard and publish annual reports. Data will also allow the city to bill Medicaid for certain services that the bureau provides.
The bureau is the newest part of the city’s ongoing efforts to expand the options for responding to crisis calls.
The Cleveland Division of Police already fields six co-response teams, which pair specially trained officers with a social work or mental health professional. It plans to add a seventh soon. Those teams respond to around 90 calls per month, Lt. John Mullin said at a recent meeting of the Mental Health Response Advisory Committee.
More than 200 Cleveland officers have completed a 40-hour Specialized Crisis Intervention Team training program, up from about 80 officers three years ago, Mullin said. (All recruits receive eight hours of crisis intervention training in the police academy.)
Tanisha’s Law advocates remain involved
Malavé is “doing good stuff,” said Piet van Lier, a member of the Cleveland Community Police Commission and one of the key advocates for Tanisha’s Law. “But it’s the city. It takes time to get things moving.”
Malavé said she has met with van Lier, Tanisha Anderson’s uncle Michael, and others who researched care response options for Cleveland for years and who pushed to get the law passed. Another advocate, medical social worker Stephanie Ash, helped write job descriptions for the bureau staff.
Malavé said the community input will continue. “Their passion is the reason that this happened,” she said. “I value the different perspectives.”
