KANKAKEE – It’s been a notable first year for Kankakee County Health Department’s IRIS online referral program.
IRIS, which is an acronym for Integrated Referral and Intake System, launched on Feb. 5, 2024, with 19 agencies onboard and zero referrals.
In its first year in existence, IRIS now onboarded 45 agencies and made more than 200 referrals among more than 130 families.
“We have a number [of agencies] that are in the works to get onboarded, and many that are still interested,“ said John Bevis, county health administrator, at last Wednesday’s Kankakee County Board Executive Committee meeting. ”So you can see that the fruition of this is happening. In regards to the number of individuals, 130 families have been served so far in getting the referrals to the different components of IRIS.”
There have been 174 referrals made with those 130 families, and 107 referrals have been completed. Of completed referrals, 37% are enrolled in services.
IRIS puts county residents in touch with medical and social service agencies so they can get the essential care they need.
IRIS was founded by the Center for Public Partnerships & Research at the University of Kansas. Kankakee County Health Department personnel were trained on the system by a team from Kansas, and Kailee Zito was hired as IRIS coordinator for the KCHD.
Bevis added in his report to the Executive Committee that of the 107 completed referrals, 39 were enrolled in services, 10 declined services, 31 couldn’t be contacted, and 27 were rejected for a variety of reasons or were enrolled with other providers.
“Or sometimes [the clients] go off the grid,” Bevis said. “When we’re not able to get a hold of them, we lose them by point of contact. They gave us a false number, or maybe they changed their number, or they’re just no longer interested. So that’s some of the reasons why there are some rejections.”
Bevis said the IRIS network will continue to grow and help connect individuals and families with the services they need. There are 42 counties in Illinois using IRIS with more than 65,000 referrals statewide.
The KCHD participated in November in a conference in Springfield on building effective partnerships and referral networks.
“We were sharing what we had done at the health department, and many other places within the state had done it to a number of agencies who haven’t done this yet,” Bevis said. “And so it did spark a lot of interest.”