Mental Health Response Advisory Committee (MHRAC) Meeting

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The meeting was not recorded, but minutes are kept and can be found on the ADAMHS website https://www.adamhscc.org/home

And here is the meeting agenda: https://www.adamhscc.org/home/showpublisheddocument/4471

The ADAMHS Board of Cuyahoga County is responsible for the planning, funding and monitoring of public mental health and addiction treatment and recovery services delivered to the residents of Cuyahoga County. https://www.adamhscc.org/about-us

As stated in its agenda, the MHRAC’s goals are
- Fostering relationships and support between the police, community and mental health providers;
- Identifying problems and developing solutions to improve crisis outcomes; 1/2

• Providing guidance to improving, expanding and sustaining the CPD Crisis Intervention Program;
• Conducting a yearly analysis of incidents to determine if the CPD has enough specialized CIT officers 2/2

Meeting began at 9:00am with public comment:
Larry Heller wants to add information about the Community learning collaborative to the agenda - accepted & added to agenda

November meeting summary is accepted

Jim McPike discusses opportunity for a community-based Diversion Subcommittee. MHRAC’s diversion subcommittee is narrow, within the police, but “diversion really has to be systemic.” Richard Cirillo says it would bring “broader representation”. Put to a vote, the motion carries

MHRAC Annual Report is discussed by Rodney Thomas. He’s editing & analyzing the raw data, on track to be finished & published by the end of January. McPike adds that he has a draft already made with subcommittee narratives & agrees they’re on track with the timeline

Gabriella Celeste from Quality Improvement subcommittee asks if QI will be reviewing the draft before it goes to the MHRAC main body and Scott Osiecki confirms that it can be sent to them

Rosie Palfy and a representative from one of the homeless shelters advocates to include frequent client-encountered locations in the 2021 annual report

Osiecki responds that they were included in the ‘19 report but not in 2020 - this omission was explained further by Carole Ballard by saying that many of them included private addresses

Osiecki moves on & talks about the Cuyahoga County Diversion Center:
more info on the DC: https://www.adamhscc.org/about-us/current-initiatives/cuyahoga-county-diversion-center

Stats given by Osiecki: in Oct, police & EMS started being able to make referrals to the DC.
39 individuals were referred

An expansion was also made to friend, family, & individual referrals and 54 individuals came to the DC since Nov1 because of that change

In total, between May3-Dec17, 183 individuals referred to the DC

Maria Nemec adds that including information about the outcomes of these diversions would be beneficial

LaTonya Goldsby from Black Lives Matter Cleveland asks, what happens to individuals after they go to the DC, is there a follow-up protocol? Osiecki answers that no, there isn’t a current process to follow up with individuals, it’s up to each provider to keep track

Christina Kalnicki asks if the county can leverage their resources to offer RTA transportation or Uber/Lyft services as a way to access the DC (currently any individual has to provide their own transportation)

Joan Englund is adding “transportation” to the agenda for the diversion subcommittee to discuss

Ashley Rosenberg (DC) comments on the ways that individuals get to the DC - it’s potentially an issue but all self-referred clients have made it there

Larry Heller adds that of the people he’s encountered who have gone to the DC, most of them have benefited from being there, “that there is a place they can go where people actually care”

Charles See asks if there’s a mechanism to inform officers of what happens after they drop off individual - Mike Randle responds that they do inform the officers about info pertaining to what happens after they are taken to the DC

Now it’s time for subcommittee reports! starting with Community Engagement:
Joan Englund discusses agenda for CE & vocalizes request to add social media as a standing agenda item in all subcommittees
-Beth DeJesus adds that currently social media just includes evergreen content

McPike talks about Training Sub-committee and Cirillo comments that it could be important/valuable to change the culture to include an introduction by the chief of police for the training

McPike continues that they kicked off official Crisis Intervention Team training last year, have trained 76 officers in CIT under the new program. there are 3 more trainings in 2022 in April, September, and December

Heller discusses Diversion Sub-committee; reiterates what was discussed at beginning of meeting

Gabriella Celeste asks, is someone reporting the juvenile sub-group for diversion? and requests that the recommendations put together by that ad hoc committee are reviewed/discussed so that this work doesn’t get lost

Heller discusses the Learning Collaborative opportunity & asks MHRAC members if they would provide a letter of support if they are not planning to take the lead on applying

QI committee - McPike reiterates earlier discussion, meeting next week so he’ll have more to discuss in next MHRAC meeting

Ad Hoc committees - McPike discusses that policy construction was moving along but bylaws haven’t been discussed so he will work on them

Palfy vocalizes that she is surprised at the lack of inclusion in agenda about discussing the omission of key vocabulary in consent decree policy with reference to this specific story: https://www.ideastream.org/news/cleveland-may-have-violated-the-consent-decree-by-changing-a-court-approved-mental-health-policy

McPike responds that it was human error that this was the published version of the policy

Palfy contests that it wasn’t a mistake - “this is about making sure that they provide constitutional policing”

LaTonya Goldsby asks for clarification on what the police department is actually doing in regards to following the policy - are they following the original version or the updated version that mistakenly omits the 17 words?

Osiecki asks for meeting to be adjourned because it’s 3 minutes past 10:30 and the Community Engagement subcommittee is beginning

Discussion continues with comments from Palfy, Goldsby, McPike, and Charles See before the meeting is adjourned at 10:38am. Thank you!