Eye On Illinois: Front-line workers can benefit from behavioral, mental health care

Don’t stop with cops.

That’s the immediate takeaway from a line item in a Capitol News Illinois story about Democrats’ Monday news conference of proposals aimed at law enforcement officer recruitment and retention.

While tiny parts of a huge package – offered far too late in the legislative session – the proposal has a few key components that could serve as a template scalable to multiple state agencies.

The First Responder Behavioral Health Grant Fund would help local governments, law enforcement agencies, fire districts, school districts, hospitals or ambulance services cover expenses related to behavioral health care for first responders. It’s part of an amendment to House Bill 1321, and also would let the Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board create statewide minimum standards for mental health screenings for officers.

The Mental Health and Substance Use Prevention Fund, created through an amendment to House Bill 4364, would help local governments and public universities provide resources to people who are incarcerated.

Also, an amendment to House Bill 1571 would build a child care grant program to support providers that expand after-hours and nightly child care families of first responders and other late-shift workers.

It’s too early to say if any of those goals can be achieved this week, especially because all three amendments also need a funding mechanism, but conceptually they represent a substantial effort toward acknowledging the demands we place on first responders go far beyond on-the-job duties into nearly every aspect of their personal lives.

The same thing is true in other state agencies, such as the case workers in the Department of Children and Family Services. I’ve written often about the agency’s structural deficiencies, but that was never intended as criticism of the front-line employees tasked with home visits and firsthand encounters with abuse and neglect. You can double someone’s salary without beginning to address the mental fortitude it takes to process such trauma and erect a wall between career and personal life.

While acknowledging the drawbacks of institutional approach to mental health, enacting a baseline screening program is at least an investment in the men and women who handle these tasks and would be broadly beneficial to people like teachers or the health care providers whose work is tied to Medicaid reimbursement.

Perhaps such screenings could be mandatory for some state worker pools and opt-in for others. Ideally the behavioral health grant pool also could deepen. Clearly such efforts will cost money, and some of the same Democrats pushing these ideas will vote to support election year tax “savings.” There are hurdles to clear. But we should continue discussions about how work affects health and acknowledge the importance of properly caring for those hired to complete such difficult tasks.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.