Child Wellness Campus is about to open in Cleveland; a call for community help

A call to the community to help fund a critical part of the response to help address the crisis in placement and emergency services for the highest-needs children arriving in Cuyahoga County custody.

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

The job placement crisis has been brewing for years and extends beyond Cleveland.

Cuyahoga County partners with The Centers for new child welfare campus

RELATED: Cuyahoga County partners with The Centers for new child welfare campus

In Cuyahoga County alone, there has been a loss of 300 residential treatment beds over the past decade.

While it will take time to rebuild, they said they are making progress and believe the Child Wellness Campus is an innovative approach that other cities and states are following.

“This is the intermediate step,” Ronayne said. “This is where we get kids back on their feet and ready for their future.”

Ronayne announced the Child Wellbeing Campus in December 2023.

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

The county partnered with The Centers, which operates Cleveland Christian Home, to open the project on the CCH campus.

The two entities partnered a year earlier to address an urgent placement crisis for the most vulnerable children sleeping in a county office building.

In early 2023, T-Suites opened in a renovated wing of the Cleveland Christian Home, providing eight emergency beds for youth ages 12-18 across all levels of county custody.

T-Suites just welcomed its 100th child.

They said they have learned a lot about the necessary length of stay and treatment for the complex needs of children, which has helped lay the groundwork for the Child Welfare Campus and all the unique services it will provide, including a unit dedicated to trafficking survivors.

“Even if it is not identified as a need for trafficking, there are children who have been affected by exploitation and we want to be able to provide them with safety and protection,” she said.

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

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

“What we’re creating is a safety net and a refuge for children,” Underwood said.

“We have made extraordinary progress over the past year,” Ronayne said.

Like T-Suites, Ronayne said the Child Wellness Campus will be a dignified and safe place for children with emotional or behavioral needs to heal. Long-term stays are not allowed at the Jane Edna Hunter Social Services building. Ronayne said more than 400 children have been dropped off at government buildings in Cuyahoga County over the past few years.

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

Construction delays at the 125-year-old building on Cleveland’s West Side have pushed back the opening by a few months. They now plan to welcome 24 children in February, with a goal of housing a total of 50.

“You can’t build fast enough,” said Jacqueline Fletcher, director of the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services.

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

“We want these children to come home and this partnership is essential to achieving that,” he said.

She said her team has been working hard within its partnerships to continue efforts to build additional capacity for children in need of treatment.

She said they are also working to meet with law enforcement who are dispatched to conflict between parents and teens in the district. She says the goal is to help devise better strategies for safe options.

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

Fletcher said they are also doing a better job of moving children from short-term emergency beds in T-Suites.

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

She said they’ve accomplished this through those strategic partnerships and with a dedicated team at Jane Edna that provides a person to stay with each child who needs the most help and works with the placement team.

Staff safety has been a serious concern during extended stays in the office building.

Fletcher said they are making that a priority and said they just had one of their largest classes of new workers. Twenty-two people started in August, which she said was the largest in more than two years.

Fletcher said they are slowly making progress in filling vacancies and reducing the caseload, which ranges from 10 to 12 cases per caseworker, down from 18 at one point.

While the Child Welfare Campus will house children in county custody, advocates say it will also be for caregivers and families who still have custody of their children but need services.

Fletcher said any family dealing with parenting stress or mental or behavioral health needs of their children can come and receive support.

“We want to help before harm is done, and so this will be a space where collectively that caregiver, that family, can get access to resources, services and supports. Again, it prevents further involvement of the system, and that is a critical part of this pathway to child well-being,” Fletcher said.

The Centers President and CEO Eric Morse stressed the importance of collaboration with the county and the large steering committee to drive innovation and change. He said it’s not just about The Centers and Cleveland Christian Home.

“All of the other nonprofits that serve children, the government entities, the juvenile justice system, the Developmental Disabilities Board, the ADAMHS board, the hospital systems meet every month 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 going to get overwhelmed and have the same problem. So we’re working as a collective to fix the problem so that we don’t have to deal with that in the future.”

The Child Wellness Campus is a $14 million effort.

Ronayne said they have raised nearly $10 million, including $1.5 million secured in Ohio’s capital budget thanks to bipartisan support from local lawmakers, and are now turning to the community to help fund the gap.

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

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

“These are all our children,” Morse said. “We live together in one community. If we don’t make the investments now to help those children, it will continue to get worse with each generation. It will continue to grow and become a bigger and bigger problem for us as a society.”