There are few things more maddening than a computer insisting you change your password at the exact moment you’re trying to get something important done.
Most of us have been there – guessing at little-used passcodes, creating new ones that somehow don’t meet the requirements, wondering why something so simple suddenly becomes so complicated.
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Usually the worst consequences are a few lost minutes and/or a spike in blood pressure. But for Lore Baker, executive director of Association for Individual Development, this technical snafu meant watching $1.3 million slip away.
The Aurora-based Association for Individual Development serves those with developmental, intellectual, physical and/or mental health challenges.
According to Baker, the problem happened when she was applying for a state grant through the Illinois Human Services Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery, and was told the portal she uses but once a year required a password change. After repeatedly rejecting her attempts to create a new one, she was locked out of the system. And by the time Baker could finally submit the application – a few minutes after the deadline – she was too late.
Those precious moments proved costly: The July 1 closure of AID’s Living Room, a center which has served more than 1,200 adults since it opened two years ago and is considered one of the region’s most successful mental health crisis intervention programs.
And that leaves a critical gap in the behavioral health crisis response system in southern Kane County, including in Aurora, the second-largest city in the state, where nearly nearly one in four people arrive at the Living Room center with police officers and/or paramedics or community partners because they need immediate help before a situation escalates, Baker said.
What the Living Room offers at some of the “darkest moments of their lives,” she added, is a place for people to regain their emotional footing, talk with trained professionals, develop a safety plan and find additional support.
And that has, without question, made a significant impact. More than 99% of its guests were able to avoid hospitalization after receiving support, according to AID sources, which as Baker pointed out, reduces strain on already crowded emergency room departments and jails.
All of which makes what happened on the computer so difficult to understand.
Baker accepts responsibility for missing the deadline. But she also believes that “the system under GATA (the Illinois Grant Accountability and Transparency Act) was never intended to become a ‘gotcha,'” – where a technical failure outweighs the needs of so many vulnerable residents.
AID’s Living Room center in Aurora not only serves southern Kane County but also northern Kendall County, including Oswego and Montgomery, Baker said, noting there’s been an even greater demand for such programs after Mercy Medical Center in Aurora, now a for-profit hospital, closed its crisis intervention center.
She also points out that, while there are similar programs covering Elgin and DuPage County, miles and minutes are critical when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis.
This isn’t simply about balancing AID’s $68 million budget, by the way. The demand is not shrinking. If anything, Baker says, it’s growing as families struggle with uncertainty over Medicaid and SNAP reductions and the anxieties surrounding cost of living increases and immigration crackdowns.
The password may have been the immediate problem. But the real question facing Illinois is whether a few minutes should erase two years of safety nets for people whose lives can change in a matter of moments.
Baker, who is determined to right this wrong, has been meeting with city officials to see what can be done to reopen the doors of what Mayor John Laesch described as a “24/7 program” that’s “saved countless lives” and has been a “key part” of Aurora’s crisis response system.
“The city is currently working with state leaders and local healthcare providers to come together and find additional funding, as well as explore alternative options, in an effort to restore this vital service,” Laesch said.
There’s something you can do, as well.
On July 14 AID is calling for a Take Action Tuesday – contact Gov. JB Pritzker’s Chicago office at 312-814-2121 and urge him to restore funding so the Living Room can reopen.
“Keep calling again and again,” Baker suggested, until all these voices are heard.
“When you start something and then yank it away,” she added, “you hurt the trust people have that you will always be there.”
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