State ends contract with Chicago mental health agency
The Illinois Department of Human Services has dropped its contract with the Community Mental Health Council on Chicago’s South Side, contending the agency is fiscally mismanaged.
DHS spokeswoman Januari Smith Trader says millions of dollars has been given the mental health center, but it “continues to experience serious fiscal mismanagement and eventual insolvency.”
Dr. Carl Bell, the center’s head and part-time professor of clinical psychology and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, blames the center’s fiscal problems on the state’s woes. He notes Illinois began slowing payments two years ago. He says as a result, the center he founded in 1975 has lost seven psychiatrists, in addition to therapists and case managers.
Bell says he is seeking bridge funding to transition his 1,000 patients to alternative agencies.