CLEVELAND — The opioid crisis is still a major epidemic here in Ohio, and one Ohio county is opening a first-of-its-kind facility to give those with mental illness and addiction a different treatment option than jail. 

What You Need To Know

  • The Cuyahoga County Diversion Center is open and taking patients

  • Oriana House will run day-to-day operations

  • Services will include treatment, case management, counseling, support services, services to enroll in benefits like Medicaid and Social Security disability, and employment and vocational training services

 “You don’t hear as much about it as you have with the advent of COVID, but it is still there and it is still ravishing communities as much as ever. And so we see this as an opportunity to help kind of put another option for us to better address those issues in terms of the opioid crisis,” said Michael Randle, the executive vice president of operations for Oriana House, the addiction treatment agency located near the Diversion Center.

The Diversion Center will provide mental health and addiction services for those who are arrested. 

Some of the services provided include treatment, case management, counseling, support services, services to enroll in benefits like Medicaid and Social Security disability, and employment and vocational training services. 

Police will have a 24-hour hotline staffed by Frontline Services to determine if someone should go to the Diversion Center. 

The county said the facility doesn’t just help combat addiction. It will also reduce overcrowding at the jail and offer another option that isn’t incarceration.

“Up until now, law enforcement responds to a scene, their option is to take someone to jail or not. And so, too often they end up having to take them to jail. This is an opportunity for them to, again, bring them to the Diversion Center, get someone the treatment they need, rather than sending them to a jail cell and then the cycle of the criminal justice system starts for that individual,” said Brandy Carney, the chief of special operations for Cuyahoga County.

The county said the two-year contract with the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board to operate the Diversion Center costs just under $10 million and the entire project is expected to cost around $20 million.

And the settlement money from the opioid lawsuit is helping to pay for it. The ADAMHS Board said the county plans on funding the center in the future. 

“Last week we reached another high of the deaths by opioid as well as the opioid overdoses, so we as the county and we as the ADAMHS Board, want people to have the opportunity to live, so we want them to have the opportunity to get treatment. So rather than get arrested for let’s say an overdose, we want them to be diverted here so they can get into treatment.” ​