A Rockford center that helps people who are having a psychiatric crisis will close in 30 days, unless it comes up with funding that’s being held back by the state.
Rosecrance’s Mulberry Center is a triage program for people during the height of a psychiatric emergency: they’re immediately assessed, stabilized, and a care plan is put into action. It was designed to keep people out of jail and emergency rooms, when possible. The state of Illinois has committed one and a half million dollars to the program every year since closing Singer Mental Health Center in 2012. That's until the state zeroed the triage program out of the last two budgets.
“It’s very disappointing, and in my view, unconscionable," says Philip Eaton is President and CEO of the Rosecrance Health Network, "The impact this has on not only the systems in our region, but also on the individuals who find themselves needing those services.”
More than a thousand people from the region pass through the triage center every year. Rosecrance board members are now lobbying city and county officials, as well as Rockford’s three major hospitals, for money to keep the program open, unless the state funding comes through.
