* This is much-needed here. People of all political and ideological persuasions talk about the dire need for mental health care all the time. To do this, we need more trained people. We don’t have to build the best program in the nation, but we definitely need to do a lot more.

You may have noticed earlier today that the Choate revamp will be led by this very same Behavioral Health Workforce Center. Press release…

Today, Governor JB Pritzker along with state and local officials celebrated the launch of a new Behavioral Health Workforce Education Center, which will increase Illinois’ capacity to recruit, educate, and retain behavioral health professionals. The Center builds upon the state’s commitment to behavioral health transformation, strengthening behavioral health care infrastructure and access across the state.

Housed at Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine, the Center was created in partnership with the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Jane Addams College of Social Work, the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE), and the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS).

“From care portals and universal screenings to improved coordination of service delivery and increased statewide capacity, we are laying out a plan to build the best behavioral health system in the nation,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “We’re launching the Behavioral Health Workforce Education Center, a partnership between the Illinois Board of Higher Education, Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine, and the University of Illinois Chicago’s Jane Addams College of Social Work. It will begin with a $5 million annual investment from the Department of Human Services to help both rural and urban areas of our state address the behavioral healthcare crisis to increase access to effective services for all Illinoisans”

In Illinois and across the nation, behavioral health professionals are only able to provide a fraction of the services required to meet the population’s needs due to a national shortage of workers. The Center was established to combat these critical shortages in the workforce by addressing barriers to recruitment and training, collecting data on behavioral health needs, increasing diversity in the workforce, and expanding the capacity of health care providers to meet behavioral health needs.

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU SOM) will serve as the primary administrative hub in Springfield, providing coordination and support for building the behavioral health workforce pipeline and increasing entry into the field. The UIC Jane Addams College of Social Work will serve as the secondary hub, supporting specific data collection and training initiatives. Public and independent universities, as well as community colleges in ten regions, will be invited to participate as partners to increase the statewide impact.

The creation of the Center is a milestone in a long-term plan to address the behavioral health workforce emergency. State lawmakers sounded an alarm about the staffing shortages in a unanimous 2018 resolution. In 2019, a Behavioral Health Workforce Education Center Task Force issued a final report recommending the creation of a hub-and-spoke center to address unmet mental and behavioral health needs.

SIU SOM, UIC Jane Addams College of Social Work, and all consortium members will coordinate programs and oversee initiatives to increase the behavioral healthcare workforce and its capacity to provide high-quality behavioral health services across the state.

“We have been facing a workforce crisis in mental health for years due to a shortage of behavioral health specialists. Local staffing levels were already critical in rural and small urban communities, and the pandemic made matters worse globally, with a 25 percent increase in people seeking mental health care,” said Kari Wolf, MD, Chair of Psychiatry at SIU SOM and CEO of the Behavioral Health Workforce Center. “Through the Center, we aim to assess current educational pathways and create additional training opportunities to develop a diverse behavioral health workforce that is distributed across the entire state.”

“We’re excited to have this opportunity to understand the needs of the behavioral health workforce and support their training and career development,” said Sonya Leathers, PhD, UIC Jane Addams College of Social Work professor and co-director of Center activities at UIC. “We hope to increase access to effective services through initiatives that will provide critically needed support and training for behavioral health providers in a range of traditional and nontraditional settings.” […]

“I commend and thank Governor Pritzker for prioritizing behavioral health workforce development in Illinois. The Workforce Center is an opportunity to transform the system to make it more responsive to the needs of individuals, families and children in this State,” said Grace B. Hou, Secretary, Illinois Department of Human Services. “IDHS is energized to work with our partners to strengthen the infrastructure needed to provide critical services to those in need.”

“The Behavioral Health Workforce Center will help increase the number of behavioral health professionals in Illinois at a crucial time, as we are still grappling with the impacts of the pandemic,” said IBHE Executive Director Ginger Ostro. “Addressing workforce shortages and needs in the state is a key goal of the state’s strategic plan for higher education, and we are excited to work collaboratively with our agency and university partners to ensure we are meeting workforce needs in behavioral health in benefit of the people of Illinois.”

Numerous legislators were also quoted in the release.

Also, this ties in to the inadequate number of pediatric psychiatric hospitals in Illinois that we talked about today and the problems with finding placements for kids who are in those hospitals and don’t have a way out. It’s crucial that this succeeds.