Oak Park village trustees are set to review statistics outlining the impact of one of its new programs at their meeting Tuesday, July 15.
Trustees will review statistics on the operations of the village’s Engaging Community For Healthy Outcomes program, otherwise known as ECHO. Launched in February, the program is meant to provide a variety of social service support to people in the community, with the statistics provided to trustees meant to outline where the pilot program has made its biggest impacts so far.
“These roles are providing service connections and case management to community members who have engaged with emergency responders and may need additional services that are not available through a traditionally dispatched/emergency response,” village staff wrote in supporting documents. “Community care navigators follow up with neighbors and/or their families and provide a warm introduction to other care or service providers in the community. Community care navigation also includes rapid response to calls made directly to the village or village-initiated calls for service related to unhoused community members and traumatic community events and generally serve as subject matter experts housed within the village.”
The discussion follows the village hiring a new leader for the program.
Mary Naughton started earlier this month as the new Program Manager for ECHO according to the village. ECHO was launched with the hiring of two care coordinators — Maxie Moses and Kimberly Smith — and is managed within the village’s Community Services division led by Vanessa Matheny.
Most recently, Naughton served as the director of a community treatment program, where she led a multidisciplinary team providing intensive, community-based behavioral health services to individuals living with severe and persistent mental illness, according to the village.
The program was first approved a year ago via a unanimous vote at a June 11, 2024 board meeting, in which trustees gave the greenlight for the pilot program to enter its first phase. The program was billed as providing alternative responses to issues without involving police officers amid “community calls for a reimagining of public safety,” according to a board presentation last year.
The program’s development followed a 2022 study by consultant group BerryDunn that the village commissioned to help outline a vision for alternative response in Oak Park.
According to the board presentation, ECHO has received referrals to clients from a wide variety of sources, although they are most commonly connected to clients via the Oak Park Police Department, the Oak Park Fire Department and through people walking in for service.
Of the many types of issues that ECHO staffers help provide services for, staffers most often helped clients needing help with senior services issues, homelessness, housing instability and mental health issues, according to the presentation.
ECHO’s services saw a peak in their utilization last month, according to the presentation.
The program had 54 total “repeat engagement” clients, according to the presentation.