{"id":92268,"date":"2025-07-25T20:20:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T20:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/92268\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T20:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T20:20:11","slug":"chicagos-care-program-at-a-tipping-point-south-side-weekly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/92268\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago\u2019s CARE Program at a Tipping Point \u2013 South Side Weekly"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was first published<\/a> by MindSite News, a nonprofit news site that reports on mental health, and is the result of collaboration with Medill investigative Lab-Chicago. Sign up for the MindSite Daily newsletter here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On a chilly afternoon in October 2023, a single mother stood in her living room on Chicago\u2019s North Side as her teenage daughter erupted in rage, kicking, screaming and threatening to take her own life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mom, Pamela, was frozen, phone in hand, caught between a daughter having a mental health crisis and a system that previously had failed them.<\/p>\n

A few years earlier, she says, her daughter had been outgoing. Good in school, she loved sports and had plenty of friends. But as an adolescent, her moods grew darker, her behavior volatile.<\/p>\n

Amid her mental health struggles, Pamela\u2014whose last name is being withheld to protect her daughter\u2019s identity\u2014was left grasping for support.<\/p>\n

When she needed help for her daughter and called 911, police officers responded, and that usually left her daughter shaken. At times, she says, the police acted aggressively\u2014raising their voices, getting too close, putting their hands on the girl, making things worse.<\/p>\n

\"\"Pamela glances out the window of her North Side apartment. The CARE crisis response program provided her daughter with critical help. She wonders if it will be there for the next family in need. Photo: Hope Moses<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a dysregulated human, and you escalate, most often, that human will continue to escalate,\u201d Pamela says. \u201cHaving the police come in and out of your house is very traumatizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

So this time when she called 911, she asked for the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement<\/a> or CARE team\u2014a program created in 2021 to offer clinical help in a mental health crisis and limit police involvement. Within a few minutes, a van carrying a mental health professional, paramedic and police officer pulled up to Pamela\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the CARE team came in, they were trained, and they knew how to calm the situation in a very professional, respectful way that my daughter was able to respond to,\u201d Pamela says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CARE became a lifeline, assisting her daughter, now nineteen, at least six times over the past four years and bringing stability to moments that once spiraled out of control.<\/p>\n

But that, increasingly, is not the way the program is working. A six-month investigation by Medill Investigative Lab-Chicago and MindSite News found that CARE teams are responding to fewer and fewer mental health calls, that police are responding to the vast majority, and that the overall effort is hampered by dysfunction and bureaucratic infighting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"This map shows concentration of potentially mental health-related 911 calls and areas served by CARE. Community areas with cross-hatching had 5 or more CARE responses in 2024. Darker colors indicate a higher number of mental health-related 911 calls. The city\u2019s public mental health clinics are represented by pink dots, and libraries with public mental health services are represented by pink squares. ARC-GIS mapping by Kelsey Rydland, Northwestern University Librarian.<\/p>\n

Operators answering 911 calls are dispatching CARE teams to mental health calls less frequently\u2014a sign, former CARE staff members say, that dispatchers and first responders have lost confidence in the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another hurdle looms, too: The federal COVID recovery funds that have paid for most of the program\u2019s operations to date will run out next year. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement sent to Medill and MindSite News that he is committed to funding the program with city dollars and ultimately expanding it.<\/p>\n

A movement emerges, and recedes\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The use of mobile crisis teams to respond to mental health crises expanded nationally during the reform movement that intensified after a white Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest. But today, many cities are struggling with increasingly uncertain funding and staffing shortages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Eugene, Oregon, CAHOOTS\u2014the country\u2019s most celebrated crisis response program\u2014shut down<\/a> this year. New York\u2019s B-HEARD program has been mired in controversy, and responds to only a fraction<\/a> of eligible calls. And federal budget cuts to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) are worrying operators of mobile crisis programs nationwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone\u2019s concerned right now,\u201d Dr. Margie Balfour, chief clinical quality officer of Connections Health Solutions in Arizona, told Behavioral Health Business<\/a>. \u201cSAMHSA block grants fund a lot of this work. We\u2019re definitely keeping our eye on that, but it\u2019s hard to know what we\u2019re facing just yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

What began as a bold experiment in public health is now at risk of becoming a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n

A long time coming<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Chicago, calls to reform the mental health system long predated the launch of the CARE program. Mayor Rahm Emanuel\u2019s decision to close six of twelve city mental health clinics in 2012 spurred citywide protests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advocates worried the closures would disproportionately affect underserved communities, many of whom relied on these clinics for mental health care and a sense of community. City officials said<\/a> the clinics would be replaced with higher-quality private care through partnerships with more than sixty clinics, saving millions of dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But vulnerable populations bore the brunt of the drop in access to care, increasing the likelihood that those suffering a mental health-related emergency would be met with police force rather than medical treatment, advocates say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, as Medill and MindSite News previously reported<\/a>, during almost the same period\u2014August 2020 through August 2024\u2014Chicago police used non-fatal force including taser, batons and non-fatal gunfire against more than 150 people following mental health-related calls to 911. Police also fatally shot one person in the midst of a mental health crisis, according to a Washington Post database<\/a>. These encounters disproportionately affected Black people, who comprise 27 percent of the population but experienced two-thirds of the use-of-force incidents.<\/p>\n

The push for reform accelerated in 2020. The Collaborative for Community Wellness<\/a>\u2014a coalition of mental health professionals, community-based organizations and residents\u2014launched the \u201cTreatment Not Trauma\u201d campaign, demanding a citywide crisis-response system that didn\u2019t rely on police and a plan to reopen the shuttered clinics.<\/p>\n

Pushing for care, not punishment<\/strong><\/p>\n

In September 2020, Ald. Rossana Rodr\u00edguez S\u00e1nchez (33rd) introduced an ordinance calling for a move to non-police responses. The proposal, she later told Medill and MindSite News, reflected demands from Black and brown communities \u201cthat people experiencing mental health issues are met with care, not punishment.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Opponents on the council and in the police union opposed the proposal as a move to \u201cdefund the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

CARE was then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot\u2019s compromise: a two-year pilot involving teams of police officers, paramedics and mental health clinicians. Some activists opposed police involvement, but then-Police Supt. David Brown said officers would provide safety.<\/p>\n

Including the police \u201cwas a really bad idea, and we fought against it,\u201d says Arturo Carrillo, a founder of the Collaborative for Community Wellness and deputy director of health and violence prevention with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.<\/p>\n

The CARE pilot launched in September 2021 with a $3.5 million budget, and its limitations were clear from the start. It operated in only a handful of neighborhoods between 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.\u2014not what reform advocates had envisioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From the start, researchers at the University of Chicago\u2019s Health Lab\u2014which was commissioned to evaluate the pilot\u2014saw serious challenges stemming from the need for police, fire and health department officials to collaborate. The agencies clashed over authority and approach, as well as seemingly mundane issues such as coordinating uniforms and meal breaks, said Jason Lerner, director of programs at the Health Lab.<\/p>\n

Insiders agree, and say turf battles have hampered the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a fight between the three entities\u201d \u2014police, fire and health\u2014says one former CARE worker who spoke on condition of anonymity. \u201cWho\u2019s gonna be in charge? There was no real collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

That made it difficult to do the job effectively and made interdepartmental interactions feel \u201cvery quid pro quo\u2014very \u2018you do me a favor, I do you a favor,’\u201d said former CARE clinician Patrick Cornelius.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was part of the learning curve for the city,\u201d Lerner said. \u201cPeople look at CARE and think, \u2018Why isn\u2019t it responding to more calls? Why isn\u2019t it more widely available?\u2019 But from my perspective, that\u2019s the reason you have pilots.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A mayor promises change<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Brandon Johnson took office in 2023, mental health reform was key to his agenda. He promised to reopen closed clinics, expand CARE\u2019s hours and phase police out of CARE operations. Johnson has long been an outspoken advocate on the issue, having lost his brother<\/a> to struggles with mental health.<\/p>\n

Last September, Johnson\u2019s office announced<\/a> that CARE had transitioned to a non-police model and was being moved from the police department to the health department. He framed the change as a major step forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy directing 911 mental health calls to public health teams, we are ending the criminalization of these issues,\u201d the mayor said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cI am pleased that (police and firefighters) can transition back to their primary roles of protecting community safety and responding to medical emergencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, seven CARE teams\u2014composed of a mental health clinician and an emergency medical technician\u2014respond to low-risk 911 calls involving mental health issues in specific police districts, mostly on the south and west sides, as well as Uptown, the Loop and several other North Side neighborhoods. One team can respond citywide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Health department call logs obtained by Medill and MindSite News show a slow rise and then an abrupt decline in the number of calls handled by CARE teams: They responded to 37 calls in 2021, 481 in 2022 and 773 in 2023. Then, amid Johnson\u2019s 2024 restructuring, that number plummeted to 276.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This year, preliminary data show, CARE teams appear to be going on calls at roughly 2023 levels, but with a significant difference. When a CARE team responds, they are most often doing so after team members hear a radio call that police are already responding to.<\/p>\n

Police are responding to the vast majority of calls designated in public records as CARE calls, mostly alone but sometimes alongside separate CARE clinical teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since only the police can transport people to a hospital against their will, 911 operators often are reluctant to dispatch CARE teams. That frequently leaves CARE team clinicians sitting in their offices unsure what to do, a former staffer said. And since CARE vans operate without sirens, it takes them longer than police to get to a call.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2021, only 8 percent of CARE responses were initiated by 911 dispatchers. That number rose to 19 percent in 2023 and 33 percent in 2024, according to health department data.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After the police were removed from CARE teams in October 2024, the portion of CARE responses initiated by 911 dispatchers fell from 46 percent in September to just 9 percent in December, while the portion of responses the CARE team initiated on its own rose from 29 percent to 86 percent.<\/p>\n

The number of police calls for CARE assists also plummeted, from 62 percent of all CARE responses in August 2024 to just 5 percent in December 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By another metric, CARE teams responded to fewer than 1 percent of 96,000 calls that 911 dispatchers categorized last year as potentially mental health-related.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s office said in a statement to Medill and MindSite News that city officials are \u201caware\u201d of these numbers and working to \u201cdevelop solutions so that the CARE team is dispatched more frequently to meet the need for mental health services.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mayor is also appointing a committee to include his policy chief, Jung Yoon, and unnamed department heads, alders and community partners to develop an \u201caction plan within the next 45 days\u201c to take corrective actions and address concerns.<\/p>\n

Turf battles impede a program<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the program\u2019s early days, the criteria for dispatching CARE changed frequently, said CARE clinician Drake Schoeppl, leaving dispatchers confused about which calls qualified.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of dispatchers were scared because they didn\u2019t want to get in trouble\u201d if a situation became violent, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The health department wants 911 operators to deploy CARE teams more often, rather than the teams self-dispatching, says Dr. Jenny Hua, Chicago\u2019s interim deputy commissioner for behavioral health, but it\u2019s a hard call since dispatchers are supposed to be sure there\u2019s no crime or medical emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have investigated very, very, very, very, very thoroughly\u201d why CARE is dispatched so infrequently, Hua says. In part, it results from having \u201ca program that is meant to meet mental health needs sort of rubbing against the necessities of a 911 system that is designed to encounter emergencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hua says calls that have \u201cnothing but a mental health component\u201d and are clearly eligible for CARE are \u201ca needle in a hay stack\u201d of 911 calls.<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s office concurred. \u201cThe 911 system must assume the worst, because they don\u2019t want emergencies missed,\u201d its statement said. \u201cA person could be lying on the street because of a heart attack, or an overdose, or a schizophrenic episode. In a medical emergency, a paramedic is the default first responder. In a violence-related call, police is the default.\u201d<\/p>\n

City records show CARE teams have responded to a wide range of settings with success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In one case, CARE clinician Drake Schoeppl says, a woman barricaded inside her home because she thought the FBI was coming. Police surrounded the house for thirty minutes. When Schoeppl intervened, he listened without challenging her delusions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCops a lot of times can get really impatient, don\u2019t want to deal with it, or they don\u2019t know how to deal with it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he says, she walked out on her own and agreed to go to a hospital for help\u2014the kind of outcome CARE aims for.<\/p>\n

In another case, in February 2023, a sixty-six-year-old woman was walking in traffic, incoherent and underdressed in freezing weather. CARE clinicians got her the hospital care she needed, records show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

About one-quarter of CARE calls in 2024 resulted in the person being taken to a hospital emergency department for evaluation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Krista Murphy, a clinical social work lead in the psychiatry emergency department at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, says police officers or paramedics who bring people with mental health symptoms to the ER \u201caren\u2019t able to really speak to their clinical symptoms just because they don\u2019t have training in mental health.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mental health expertise of CARE workers, on the other hand, enables them to expedite assessments, allowing hospital staff to quickly determine whether psychiatric admission or alternative care is needed and benefiting patients, Murphy says.<\/p>\n

The future of CARE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the CARE program launched in 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act has been its biggest source of funds\u2014$6.87 million through this year. But that money will be mostly spent this year and must be fully spent by the end of next year, leaving a major gap in subsequent years.<\/p>\n

Despite that challenge, Johnson \u201cis committed to continued funding of the CARE program using city Corporate dollars,\u201d his office said. \u201cEven in a difficult budget year, CARE is a priority for the administration and Mayor Johnson will do everything in his power to expand resources for the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

His primary focus now, the statement said, is \u201ceffective implementation before we begin to plan for future expansion\u201d that would grow the program\u2019s geographic footprint and expand it to daily, round-the-clock operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Budget talks for fiscal year 2026 begin in August, and Rodr\u00edguez S\u00e1nchez is adamant that the city continue funding CARE. \u201cTo those who say CARE isn\u2019t working: the truth is, we haven\u2019t given it the full scope of resources or structure to thrive,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can\u2019t walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pamela, the North Side mother, says CARE teams have helped de-escalate her daughter\u2019s crises, connected the family with resources and helped them develop a plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf CARE hadn\u2019t come into our lives, I think things would have been much worse,\u201d she says. \u201cI think I would\u2019ve been led down a different path, instead of focusing on her wellness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She worries what might happen if the CARE teams disappear or their roles become limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m at the end of the road with this kid and the options available to her,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople with mental illness\u2014they need help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Yoon, Janani Janarthanan, Nicole Johnson, Tyler Williamson, Jay Joseph, Nicole Johnson, Kari Lydersen contributed reporting.<\/p>\n

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