Ada S. McKinley Community Services Hiring More Mental Health Professions to Support Agency Role in Ill. Pathways to Success

 

Ada S. McKinley Community Services Hiring More Mental Health Professions to Support Agency Role in Ill. Pathways to Success  

CHICAGO, Ill. -- An aggressive hiring effort is underway at Ada S. McKinley Community Services to bring more mental health professionals to historically under-resourced South Side Chicago communities. Ada S. McKinley is seeking to fill a variety of mental health positions to support its new leadership role in the Pathways to Success Program, launched earlier this year by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (DHS).  Under this new role, Ada S. McKinley, one of the largest social enterprises on Chicago’s South Side, will strengthen its efforts to provide comprehensive care to youth in mental health crises.  

Ada S. McKinley has been selected by DHS as a care coordinator and support organization for the Pathways to Success program, specifically serving Bronzeville, South Shore, Chinatown and Auburn / Gresham. Under the Pathways program, Ada S. McKinley will provide intensive care and coordinated services for Medicaid-enrolled children under the age of 21, who have complex behavioral health needs and could benefit from additional supports. 

The program allows Ada S. McKinley Community Services to provide more wrap-around services to youth and their families, with the goal of deflecting youth in mental health crises away from costly emergency room visits or police involvement.  The agency is expanding upon its current successes – it has an approximately 70% success deflection rate in serving youth so they avoid police or hospital involvement. 

The 104-year old nonprofit is building a Pathways team focused on healing South Side communities that have experienced decades of neglect, higher death and illness rates during the pandemic, marginalization, poverty and violence.  

Ada S. McKinley’s recruiting efforts target mental health professionals who live in the communities served, and who can view patients’ challenges through a trauma-informed and culturally sensitive lens. This community-based approach ensures everyone is working together to prevent a young person from experiencing a mental health crisis.    

“Ada S. McKinley Community Services is partnering with Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services to expand our fight against the mental health crisis plaguing our community” said Jamal Malone, CEO, Ada S. McKinley Community Services. 

“By increasing investment in the mental health of our youth we are helping to stabilize families for generations to come.” he added.  

As a Pathways Care Coordinator and Support Organization, Ada S. McKinley will ensure a youth facing a crisis who contacts the nonprofit will get structured, crisis management and therapeutic services while connecting with primary care. The model is designed to bring together an interdisciplinary team of professional and natural community supports, to assure a family they are not alone in navigating a crisis and getting the services they need.  

Wrap-around services youth and families will receive through Ada S. McKinley include: 

1. Outreach to children and families, to inform them of their options for care and services;  

2. Create and meet regularly with a Child Family Team (CFT);  

3. Identifying a child’s needs and strengths and developing a strengths-based service plan;  

4. Crisis assessment, safety and prevention planning, and response activities;  

5. Coordinating and consulting with managed care organizations,  providers, other child-serving systems, and any other supports involved with the child’s care. This includes helping transition children from an institutional setting, including from an out-of-state setting, to a community-based living arrangement;  

6. Referring, linking, and following-up with service providers and social service agencies for services recommended by the CFT. 

“Everyone we encounter in the course of delivering services, everyone who walks through the doors of our clinics seeking services, is our Community.” said Nestor Flores, Vice President, Behavioral Health, Ada S. McKinley Community Services. “And our communities need support to heal and thrive, not merely to survive.” Flores added. 

For the past 40 years, Ada S. McKinley Community Services’ Behavioral Health & Clinical Services program has assisted tens of thousands of adults and children through crisis support, child placement stabilization, specialized family support, and outpatient mental health.  

Ada S. McKinley Community Services is one of Chicago’s largest, most respected and impactful Human Services organizations. The mission of the 104-year old nonprofit is to empower, educate and employ people to change lives and strengthen communities. Serving more than 7,000 people annually, with more than 500 people employed at over 70 program sites in the Chicago metropolitan area, Wisconsin and Indiana, Ada S. McKinley Community Services’ wide-ranging programs fall under the umbrellas of child development and youth, employment and community support, and behavioral health and clinical.  For more information and updates please visit www.adasmckinley.org and follow us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram. 

  

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