CLEVELAND — The May Dugan Center is expanding its behavioral health services with an aggressive three-year plan already underway. Not only is the center able to increase the number of people it helps, but it now has a plan to provide resources never before provided to people of all ages and backgrounds.

People often know the May Dugan Center for its Trauma Recovery Program, which works with crime victims throughout a 16-week course. Well, since most trauma and problems resulting from traumatic experiences don’t go away in 16 weeks, the expansion of May Dugan’s behavioral health unit will now be able to help people beyond that. deadline.

Made possible by a $300,000 grant, May Dugan’s three-year behavioral health expansion project is officially underway. A multi-step plan is in place to get the unit where it needs to be within this time frame. Steps include developing a plan to help clients transition from high-intensity care to lower-intensity care and recovery, developing culturally specific services for specialized groups, hiring more clinical staff for continuing education and increasing Medicaid billing and revenue so the program can become self-sustaining.

“We will increase our services to probably include peer support for substance abuse and mental health and we will add a child and adolescent therapist,” said Ann Spelic, director of behavioral health at the May Dugan Center. “We just recently hired an LGBTQ therapist who can serve adolescents and adults so that we can reach that transitional age of youth that is really struggling. We have a senior therapist that we just added and a Spanish-speaking therapist.

Spelic said that since 2020, the increase in demand for services has not slowed down. The May Dugan Center’s behavioral health team is made up of seven people who help approximately 250 people each year. At the end of the three-year expansion plan, the team will have 13 employees.

Assistant Director Andy Traeas said without the recent $8 million renovation, none of the behavioral health expansion plans would have been possible.

The May Dugan Center marks the official opening of a completely renovated building

RELATED: The May Dugan Center marks the official opening of a completely renovated building

“Through the renovation, we were able to add more offices, which means we can add more staff, which means we can add more people,” Traeas said. “We were able to double the number of group therapy rooms. We were really able to physically expand our space so that we could develop our programming accordingly.

Eventually, the May Dugan Center will also look to add a pharmacy and pharmacist to help patients have easy access to medications needed for treatment. The program is expected to be fully operational by 2027.