Cleveland residents want a non-police crisis response program that includes ongoing training and builds trust through existing community organizations, according to a new report.
The report provides an overview of the feedback offered at six community meetings organized by the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board of Cuyahoga County.
What is care response? Care response is a program where a mental health expert and often a paramedic respond to emergency mental health crisis calls. This program does not involve police at all.
The board plans to launch a care response program later this summer. A licensed behavioral health professional and a peer support specialist will respond to mental health crisis calls. A peer support specialist is someone with lived experience with mental health or substance use disorder who has been through training and certification.
FrontLine, which currently handles calls to 988 (the Suicide and Crisis lifeline) and manages a mobile crisis response team, will oversee the initial five teams serving two ZIP codes — 44105 and 44102.
Community members said they want care response team members to get ongoing training “to make sure they have the skills to respond to various situations in a way that is compassionate, effective, and affirming,” the report said.
People emphasized that training should include how to respond to the LGBTQ+ community and to culturally diverse groups.
“To serve the diverse communities represented in these ZIP codes, responders should demonstrate cultural humility with respect to race, gender and sexuality, and religion,” the report summarized from responses about responder characteristics.
Following through
In the 44102 ZIP code, which covers most of the West Side from the western edge of Clark-Fulton to some of West Boulevard and Edgewater, participants said they want the board to ensure that responder teams can speak languages most used by residents, including Spanish, Swahili and Arabic.
In 44105, people asked that care response teams be aware of the food desert in the Union-Miles and Slavic Village communities. They suggested responders carry snacks, bus tickets and referrals to other agencies.
Residents also expect the ADAMHS Board and FrontLine to hire responders from the neighborhoods being served and people who are involved in the community and know what resources exist, according to the report.
To build trust, the ADAMHS Board and care response teams should partner with grassroots organizations in the two ZIP codes and through those relationships educate the community about the program, the report said.
People also shared concerns about whether care response would have the capacity to respond quickly to people who call 988 in need of the program’s services so that calls aren’t routed to law enforcement.
Responders should also “follow through” and make sure people are connected to the right services, the report said. Commenters said they expect the program to be more than a “cold handoff” in which people are simply taken to or referred to mental health services without follow-up.
Limited engagement
The report includes responses from 75 people who participated in six focus group conversations in February and March. Most of the participants – 46 – were mental health or behavioral health providers who serve residents in at least one of the two ZIP codes. Twenty-six participants were residents or former residents of the two ZIP codes.
The two in-person sessions on the southwest side, focused on 44105, had only nine participants, seven of whom were service providers. The report highlights that limitation.
“Additional community engagement is needed throughout the pilot process, especially in 44105 due to limited resident engagement from that ZIP code in these sessions,” the report said in its list of recommendations.
The board worked with the Cleveland Department of Public Health, R Strategy Group and Case Western Reserve University to gather community input. Case Western’s Community Innovation Network assembled the report.
