CLEVELAND, Ohio — Just days after researchers released an evaluation of Cuyahoga County’s Diversion Center, county officials approved a broader study examining how the entire crisis response system is working.

The county’s Board of Control on Monday approved a contract worth up to $249,625 with Case Western Reserve University’s Begun Center for Violence Education, Prevention and Research to conduct a comprehensive assessment of crisis response services across the county.

The review will map the network of crisis services and build a model to help the county evaluate how effectively those services are working, according to county documents. Researchers will also make recommendations to improve the system, documents say.

The work will be funded from the county’s opioid settlement dollars.

The new study stems directly from the Begun Center’s evaluation of the county’s Diversion Center, which researchers presented a draft copy of last week.

During that work, Case Western Reserve researchers identified what county documents describe as a gap in crisis services that fell outside the scope of the original Diversion Center evaluation, county documents said. They recommended a separate study to examine the broader system and how different services fit together.

The timing is notable.

The county’s Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board is currently debating whether to move forward with funding a new Behavioral Health Crisis Center, a project supporters say would expand services for people experiencing mental health or substance use crises. It is meant to replace the Diversion Center.

But ADAMHS Board leadership has warned the organization may not be able to afford the project without cutting money from other community programs, and some opponents say it’s not needed, given the other crisis services in the community, including the Diversion Center. ADAMHS Board leadership recently outlined a new deal that would provide some funding for the crisis center but require fewer cuts to the broader system, which is believed to be “a lot more reasonable.”

The board is expected to decide later this month whether to move forward with the crisis center.

The results of the new study, however, won’t come in time to help with their decision. The study will run through October of this year, documents say, meaning officials won’t have any results until sometime later.

Case Western’s evaluation of the Diversion Center found that while the facility had not fulfilled its original promise of diverting people from jail, it had still served thousands of people. Since 2022, the center has logged more than 7,000 crisis contacts involving roughly 3,600 individuals, according to figures presented during the evaluation.

Many of those clients had prior criminal histories upon entering the Diversion Center, but were less likely to reoffend afterward, the study found. Researchers also noted that clients were being diverted from hospital emergency departments and inpatient psychiatric units.

“So, diversion is occurring, it’s just not that traditional sense of…diversion from law enforcement,” Karen Flynn, Case Western’s Senior Research Associate on the project, said during the presentation. “It’s actually diversion like a precursor to involvement with law enforcement.”

But there were still shortfalls, the study found.

Most people seeking help were still coming on their own, rather than through law enforcement referrals, it said, and half of them are leaving before completing services. It also described the screening process to get into the Diversion Center as “lengthy” for people in crisis and law enforcement officers, potentially discouraging referrals.

The report makes several recommendations to strengthen the Diversion Center, such as reducing the drop-off between people who pass screening for services and those who actually arrive at the facility, and lowering barriers that may discourage law enforcement from using it.

The study did not include a cost-benefit analysis of the Diversion Center, Flynn noted.