Oak Park trustees approved an agreement Monday between the village and Oak Park Township to help fund the youth engagement program that offers free mental health services to youth ages six to 18 across Oak Park and River Forest.
Trustees approved spending up to $15,333 annually on the program. According to Megan Traficano, the township’s youth services director, the village previously spent up to $55,000 annually on the program. The cost was able to come down after Traficano restructured the program.
The village previously participated in the program for 20 years, up until 2019, according to village officials. And it left, according to Vanessa Matheny, the village’s community services administrator, partially because of the cost of the village’s portion.
The youth engagement program, previously known as the youth interventionist program, was started in 1996 to address youth gang involvement, substance abuse and violence in Oak Park and River Forest, Traficano told the village board Monday.
Today, the program provides free mental health counseling to youths experiencing anxiety or depression, crisis or trauma, behavioral issues, are involved in gangs or who need short-term mentoring. The township program provides in-school services, home visits, support groups and bilingual services.
And it goes beyond that, too. The program partners with 10 taxing bodies, now including the village, and provides resources for them, too. Those include data sharing capabilities, consulting about youth needs, educational sessions and community crisis response help.
Any data shared among intergovernmental partners protects the identity of the clients, Traficano said. Data shared could be things like how many kids were treated for anxiety or depression in the last 12 months but would not include identifying information.
In August 2024, Laura Devitt, the youth engagement program manager, said the program saw 42 clients. Their data shows that 35 of those clients were from Oak Park, six were from River Forest and one individual is experiencing homelessness. In the township’s fiscal year 2024, which is from April 1, 2023, to April 1, 2024, the program had 95 total clients.
“Some of it is COVID related,” Traficano said, referring to an uptick in some mental health needs. “Our kids were just thrown out the window. A lot of people forgot about our kids during the pandemic. Their whole lives stopped, changed. No graduations, no proms, no dances, no plays, no seeing friends … They’re still struggling to this day to overcome some of those things.”
Traficano also said the program has never had a waitlist, as a lot of services provided are short-term. The focus is to stabilize clients and achieve short-term goals, she said, and then identify a need for long-term services if it exists.
The township also works with community partners, such as Thrive Counseling Center, she said. Sometimes when Thrive has a client on a waitlist, she said, the township will step in for a bit to help until a spot opens up.
“We really do work and function as a team and help each other out as best as we can because we just want to make sure the kids of the community are seen,” Traficano said.
Traficano also said the township does not charge clients’ insurance for this free program. She said it’s her understanding that townships cannot charge for mental health services. And waitlists can be long for mental health services, she said, so the township tries to help people as much as they can.
“We’re supposed to provide the social services to the community,” she said. “That’s [for] any of our programs … That’s what we use our tax dollars [for], is to provide those services.”
Matheny also said this program will help align the village with its efforts to implement its alternative police response to calls for service program. That’s because the youth can also be part of 911 calls made to police. So, by having village-employed social workers collaborate with the township, the two bodies can better share data and provide accurate referrals and mental health services.