Children’s Health Campus in Cleveland nears opening; community calls for help

A call to the community to fund a critical piece of intervention to help address the crisis in placement and emergency services for the highest-needs children coming into Cuyahoga County’s care.

“Our goal for Cuyahoga County is to provide better space for our children who need us most,” said Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne.

The placement crisis has been going on for years and extends beyond Cleveland.

Cuyahoga County partners with Centers for Children’s Health Campus for new campus

RELATING TO: Cuyahoga County partners with Centers for Children’s Health Campus for new campus

Cuyahoga County alone has lost 300 inpatient beds in the last decade.

While they said the rebuilding will take time, they said they are making progress and believe the Children’s Health Campus is an innovative approach that other cities and states are following.

“This is that middle step,” Ronayne said. “This is where we get kids well and on a path ready for their future.”

Ronayne announces Children’s Health Campus in December 2023.

“What I’m trying to do with our team in health and human services is provide a new front door, a campus of care,” Ronayne said at the time.

The district launched the project on the CCH campus in a partnership with The Centers, which operates the Cleveland Christian Home.

The two organizations had partnered a year ago to address an emergency placement crisis for the most vulnerable children sleeping in the county office building.

Opening in early 2023 in a renovated wing of the Cleveland Christian Home, T-Suites provides eight emergency beds for children ages 12 to 18 at all levels of county custody.

T-Suites recently welcomed its 100th child.

They said they learned a lot about the length of stay and treatment required for children’s complex needs, which helped them create a plan for all the unique services they will provide, including a Children’s Health Campus and a unit specifically for victims of human trafficking.

“Even if they are not identified as having a trafficking need, there are children who are being abused and for whom we want to provide safety and protection,” he said.

Dawnya Underwood is the executive director of Cleveland Christian Home, a program at The Centers.

Ronayne said the county, along with other community partners from the Centers, Cleveland Christian Home and Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, has formed a committee that meets regularly to discuss how to best meet the needs of the children and families they serve.

“What we’ve created is a safety net and a haven for kids,” Underwood said.

“We have made tremendous progress in the past year,” Ronayne said.

Similar to T-Suites, the Children’s Health Campus will be a dignified and safe place for children with emotional or behavioral needs to heal, Ronayne said. It’s not a long-term stay at the Jane Edna Hunter Social Services building. More than 400 children have been dropped off at government buildings in Cuyahoga County in the past few years, Ronayne said.

“Enough is enough, that’s why we set out to create a completely new model with The Centers,” he said.

Construction delays at the 125-year-old building on Cleveland’s west side pushed back the opening by several months. They now aim to welcome 24 children in February and house 50 people total.

“It can’t be built fast enough,” said Jacqueline Fletcher, director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services.

Fletcher says his department currently has about 2,200 children in its care. He says most never set foot in Jane Edna and that they have unfortunately reduced the number of children spending more than one night there. However, Fletcher says that due to a placement shortage, 15 children in county care are currently in an out-of-state setting.

“We want to bring kids back home, and so this partnership is critical in bringing those kids back home,” he said.

He said his team is working hard across their partnership to continue efforts to build additional capacity for children in need of treatment.

He said they are also working to meet with law enforcement officers who were dispatched to a parent-teen conflict in the area. He says the goal is to help them better strategize safe options.

“That’s why we’re trying to be more dynamic in our responses,” he said.

They also do a better job of moving children from short-term emergency beds at T-Suites, Fletcher said.

“The average length of stay was about 47 days, and now we’ve reduced that to about 17 days,” Fletcher said. “So we’re moving kids out to create space for other kids who would normally need it.”

They do this, she said, through strategic partnerships and a dedicated team that provides each child at Jane Edna with a person who is there when they need the most help and works with the placement team.

Due to long stay in the office building, employee safety has become a serious concern.

Fletcher said they made it a priority and had one of the largest new employee classes ever. Twenty-two people started in August, which he said was the largest in more than two years.

Fletcher said they are slowly making progress in filling vacant positions and reducing the caseload, which has been at 10-12 cases per social worker, and at one point was around 18.

While the Children’s Health Campus will house children in county custody, advocates say it will also be for caregivers and families who have custody of their children but need services.

Any family dealing with parental stress or their child’s mental or behavioral health needs can come and get support, Fletcher said.

“We want to help before harm occurs, and that will be a space where that caregiver, that family collectively can access resources, services and supports. Again, to prevent deeper system involvement, and that is a critical part of the child welfare journey,” Fletcher said.

Eric Morse, President and CEO of The Centers, emphasized the importance of collaboration with the district and the grand board in driving innovation and change. He said it’s not just The Centers and Cleveland Christian Home.

“All the other nonprofits, government agencies, juvenile justice, the Developmental Disabilities Board, the ADAMHS board, the hospital systems, they come together monthly to talk about these issues and really build a system because if we don’t do something new, if we don’t fix the system, we’re just going to get fed up and have the same problem. So we’re working collectively to solve the problem so we don’t have this in the future.”

The Children’s Health Campus is the product of a $14 million project.

Thanks to bipartisan support from local lawmakers, they have raised about $10 million, including $1.5 million from Ohio’s capital budget, and are now turning to the community to help close the gap, Ronayne said.

“This is one of those campaigns where we speak to everyone’s heart,” Ronayne said. “It’s about what you do for those who need you most, especially our children.”

They said it was about providing a dignified continuity of care and giving all children a chance for a future.

“They’re all our kids,” Morse said. “We live in a community together. If we don’t invest now to help these kids, it’s going to get worse with each generation. It’s just going to grow and become a bigger and bigger problem for us as a society.”