Imagine that you or your family experience a real emergency. Maybe your partner is having a heart attack. Maybe your kitchen is on fire. Maybe someone is trying to break in. You call 911. First responders arrive quickly and provide critical help. These things happen hundreds of times every day here in Chicago. Call centers in compliance with current standards answer 90% of 911 calls within 15 seconds and 95% within 20 seconds. We expect that rapid response. We can easily take it for granted.
We shouldn’t. Here in Illinois and around the country, we frequently underfund our 911 infrastructure. We fail to support the 911 professionals, who do such critical and stressful work.
Illinois’ state budget for the upcoming year may worsen these problems. In pursuit of the admirable goal of supporting 988 — the new way to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — a budget provision imposes a $5 million cut to the state’s already underfunded 911 system. Such funding approaches place 911 and 988 into toxic competition for resources, setting a problematic precedent when both systems require greater investment to save lives.
Under the hood, this budget provision, the Statewide 9-8-8 Trust Fund, redirects surcharges we all pay via small charges to our phone bills away from 911 to 988. Such surcharges are already drawn away from 911 in many states — including in Illinois. Such diversion worsens problems facing our nation’s 911 call centers.
The women and men who staff our 911 call centers perform their duties heroically, professionally and largely outside of public view. Years of disinvestment have produced chronic burnout and understaffing, outdated technology and — yes, in some instances — longer wait times. The professionals who handle 911 calls make critical, sometimes life-or-death decisions under tough working conditions. They bear witness to every variety of human tragedy and criminal behavior. Despite the key role 911 professionals play in emergency response, they have received little attention and support. Retention in this field is suffering as the result of low pay, often poor training resources and inadequate support in dealing with job-related traumas and stress.
Our Health Lab team’s Transform911 initiative includes collaboration with 911 professionals and organizational leaders, leading researchers on 911, emergency response and public safety. All agree that our 911 system requires increased funding and support.
The new 988 system deserves strong support. A national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline is long overdue. People in severe mental pain need someone to call. Many families and caregivers who bear witness to mental health crises need someone to call too. Many people in crisis and their loved ones are understandably reluctant to call 911, given the huge police footprint in 911-dispatched emergency response. We’ve all seen the unrepresentative but real cellphone videos of 911 calls that go awry.
Starting in July, people who call 988 will be connected to a trained counselor who will listen and provide support and connections to needed resources
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. This offers opportunities to decouple care and support from police response. Standing up the new 988 system requires us to address myriad strategic and operational details: How and when will the call/text hotline be paired with in-person emergency responses? How will 988 safeguard privacy and confidentiality? And more.The 988 system obviously requires financial resources, as does 911. Our existing 911 infrastructure is fraying. While steps have been taken to improve technology (particularly an initiative called NG911), progress is slow. A surprising number of 911 call centers rely on 1960s technology. The public expects more. Our 911 system deserves more.
The 988 hotline will also require the insights, expertise and active collaboration of 911 professionals themselves. After all, 911 staff bring decades of experience in responding to mental health crisis calls. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is the federal agency that drives and supports the 988 system. SAMHSA guidelines make plain that the federal government provides separate funding for 988 and that states can apply specific 988 fees to support crisis services without cutting funds dedicated to 911. SAMHSA specifically advises “state and local support of both 988 and 911 … to advance the well-being of our communities.”
Illinois has worked to fill these gaps. The new budget threatens this progress, siphoning money from our cash-strapped 911 system. Illinois obviously cares about 911. The state legislature recently passed a bill recognizing 911 professionals as first responders with overwhelming bipartisan support. The state needs to provide adequate funding for both 911 and 988. Today, neither receives that. Taking money from 911 to fund 988 is robbing Peter to pay Paul in crisis response.
The legislature should reallocate this $5 million back into the 911 system, and the state should find alternative sources to properly fund 988. Illinois can and must do better.
Jason Lerner, Rebecca Neusteter and Harold Pollack, members of the University of Chicago Urban Labs Health Lab, research the 911 system and work with first responders on issues at the intersection of criminal justice, addiction and mental health.
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