Multnomah County and the City of Portland in September 2022 entered a new phase of work on the Behavioral Health Emergency Coordination Network (BHECN), focused on the creation and opening of a sobering center. Work is also continuing on concepts such as a new detox and respite space, expanded behavioral health crisis triage services, and a coordinated system for referring people from these crisis spaces to longer-term stabilization options.
Through this collaborative partnership, we will work over the coming months to finalize a model for sobering that is trauma informed, and incorporates the perspective of peers and consumers.