Letters: Chicago’s Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement Program isn’t a success. But it can be.
Chicago’s Crisis Assistance Response & Engagement Program (CARE), once a promising model for coordinating public health and safety in response to mental health crises, has been reduced to a siloed and opaque existence. Around the country, other cities are deploying coordinated responses to mental health emergencies with collaboration and transparency.
In Durham, North Carolina, crisis teams have responded to over 25,000 calls since 2022. In a jarring contrast, Chicago’s CARE teams have responded to fewer than 3,000 calls in about as much time. Yet recent rhetoric from City Hall characterizes CARE as a success.
It’s not. But it can be.
First, the city must build capacity at 911 to better assess and identify behavioral health calls. Chicago’s 911 identifies fewer than 2% of calls as involving a mental health or substance use crisis, significantly below what national studies suggest. If we cannot identify the callers who are experiencing behavioral health emergencies, we cannot deliver an alternate response such as CARE.
Second, the public needs transparent and accessible safety data, including CARE’s response statistics, to understand whether the program is operating as intended. At one point, CARE had a public dashboard, but it was removed.
Third, building capacity that adds behavioral health responders to our traditional emergency response options is essential to reimagining crisis response so we reduce harm and save lives. Our Fire and Police Departments remain the primary responders to crisis calls in Chicago, in part because of the responsibilities placed upon them by law and regulation. Given this, increased collaboration and support of those personnel is necessary. The goal should be not to replace those responders, but to make sure they have the necessary capacity and training and that CARE is available alongside them.
Lastly, CARE should not be treated as a stand-alone program, but as a critical component of Chicago’s broader mental health and crisis response system. Any investment in CARE is amplified when it is braided into the larger crisis continuum and alongside 988 and federally and state funded mobile crisis teams.
CARE is a sorely needed service and a worthwhile endeavor. But our city’s approach to mental health crises remains anemic and insufficient, and thousands of people remain without the right response. More vans and increased hours are not going to solve the fundamental gaps.
All of the needed improvements are within reach, and if integrated, Chicago can truly reimagine how we respond to people experiencing crisis.
— Matt Davison, CEO, NAMI Chicago