PHOTO BY CHUCK HOVEN

Monday, April 22, 2024; A sign sponsored by the Alcohol Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board of Cuyahoga County promotes calling 988 for mental health and addiction crisis services.

by Abe Kurp

   (Plain Press May 2024) Residents of some Cleveland neighborhoods will soon have access to a new tool to help people struggling with their mental health.

   It’s a pilot program called Care Response, a 24/7 crisis response service that will deploy teams of two unarmed people, instead of police, to respond to some mental health and addiction crises. The new program is being created by the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board of Cuyahoga County with help from Frontline Service and the Cleveland Department of Public Health (CDPH).

   When the pilot launches, tentatively later this summer, residents in the 44102 and 44105 zip codes will be able to access the service by calling 988. This will connect them to a local dispatcher who will assess the situation and, if necessary, send out a Care Response team.

   Angela Cecys of CDPH said they chose these zip codes for the pilot after looking through first responder call data through the year 2023.

   “We found that zip codes 44102 and 44105 had the highest number of mental health, substance abuse, and overdose calls in the city,” she said. “44102 on the west side – and 44105 had the highest on the east side.”

   The Care Response teams responding to these calls will include one licensed social worker and one peer support specialist, which is a person with lived experience of mental illness or addiction who is in recovery and has received special training to help others facing similar problems.

   The teams will be trained to confront a variety of crisis situations, including someone talking about suicide or about harming themselves or others, someone overusing alcohol or other drugs, or someone experiencing extreme symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other mental illnesses. At this time, they will only respond to crises involving people who are 18 or older.

   Rick Oliver, the director of Crisis and Trauma Services at Frontline, also stressed that these teams will not handle emergencies where the person in crisis is in immediate danger of causing harm to themselves or others, such as apparent drug overdoses and active suicide threats. In those cases, he said, residents should continue to call 911.

   At a community meeting about the program on March 28 at Michael Zone Recreation Center, Cleveland City Council Member Jenny Spencer – whose ward includes part of the 44102 zip code – asked about how this pilot is different from some other similar programs that already exist. For example, the Cleveland Police Department has co-response units, which are teams of one police officer and one social worker that respond to mental health crises.

   Oliver stressed that the Care Response units will not have police officers.

   “Our goal is to not involve law enforcement,” he said. “That’s the whole goal of Care Response: to get a behavioral health response to a behavioral health situation.”

   Another similar program is Frontline’s own Mobile Crisis Team, which Spencer said she has on speed dial in her cell phone. 

   Oliver said one of the biggest differences with this pilot will be response time. He said the Mobile Crisis Team covers the whole county and is lucky if they can respond to a call that same day. With Care Response, though, the goal is to have teams responding within an hour. He said the pilot includes five teams of two that collectively will cover both zip codes, 24 hours, 7 days a week.

   “Most of the time there’s only going to be one team available, so our response time is going to be dependent on how many calls we get and the work that they’re doing,” Oliver said. “Again, this is a pilot. Our goal is to demonstrate that this is an effective model here in Cleveland, and then we can hopefully tap the city for more funding and more staff to do more and expand the program.”

   One of the residents at the meeting, Timothy Sommerfelt, a paramedic and 17-year veteran of Cleveland EMS, asked about how the Care Response teams would handle situations that involve medical problems. He said national best practice in other cities where the Care Response model has been implemented is to include an EMS professional on the team.

   Oliver said his teams do receive training about recognizing when to call for medical personnel, but he acknowledged that they do not have medical credentials and can’t provide that kind of care themselves.

   Another resident at the meeting, who said he is a returning citizen with a felony record, asked about what the Care Response teams will do to make someone like himself feel comfortable and safe. In particular, he highlighted this county’s history of police shootings of unarmed Black and brown people.

   Oliver said that his teams are focused on mental health and that they do not check people’s criminal records. He added that the crisis response teams under his supervision only refer calls to 911 when necessary.

   “I monitor every time Mobile Crisis calls the police,” he said. “Of our 1,500 calls a month, it’s about 30 times. It’s a small percentage, and usually it’s not someone that we’ve seen. It’s someone who calls and says they’re doing something right now, and we have no choice. And our goal is to even back that off – to have behavioral health people take that first shot at trying to engage people in distress.”

   After the pilot launches later this year, it will last for about a year, followed by an evaluation period, when the community will help decide whether to continue or even expand the program.