After some difficult years, the Champaign County Mental Health Board is seeing a surge in the ability to provide services for children, families, the homeless and immigrants.

The board’s funding has made new initiatives possible for multiple programs in Champaign County. The latest budget shows increasing revenues, particularly from property taxes, since fiscal year 2023. The fiscal year in Champaign County matches the calendar year, but the board operates on a planning year beginning July 1 and ending June 30 the next year. 

There were 38 programs across 24 agencies were granted funding in the current planning year, totaling about $5.66 million. Some agencies funded include the First Followers reentry organization, early childhood program CU Early and the Champaign County Health Care Consumers. 

About $6.64 million in property taxes collected will help fund the board’s initiatives according to the 2025 budget. This is an 11.7% increase from 2023 when it collected $5.94 million.

However, the board’s 2024 and 2025 projected fund balance stands at $3,806,365, about $30,000 short of 2023’s balance.

According to the board’s reporting system website, its services are focused on assisting eight priority groups including self advocacy, work life and young children and their families. It was established by referendum in 1972 and approved by voters in Champaign County. There are currently eight members.

Lynn Canfield, the director of the county board, said the purpose of mental health boards across the state:     

“Their original purpose was for planning and to advise the state on what to do with its funds. The state and federal governments really have a hard time funding and sustaining a robust safety net system — particularly mental health services for poor people,” Canfield said in an interview.

She said there are potential dangers of these services being tied to elections and votes.     

“So, there was a period of time in Illinois where the state didn’t fund anything for a couple of years and that meant that communities that didn’t have a mental health board — they lost services,” she said.

Canfield said the board’s clients lost access to services from psychiatrists. She also noted a lot of communities in Illinois, some not far from us, were really “hurt” by that two-year budget impact. 

“But our community was able to stay somewhat stable and rebuild,” she said. 

The Champaign County website states that the board is “responsible for planning, coordinating, evaluating and allocating funds for the comprehensive local system of mental health, developmental disabilities and substance abuse services for Champaign County.”

The CU Early program works primarily with children from birth to age three and their families to “nurture healthy parent-child relationships during the critical early years,” the website said.     

Kelly Russell, program director of CU Early, said the mental health board’s funding allowed them to serve 20 families. 

“This is our second year of funding with the mental health board. Our regular budget is so very tight,” Russell said in an interview. “We would not have been able to have a Spanish-speaking home visitor if not for the Mental Health Board funds.”

Russell said the local community has a “very large” population of Spanish-speaking families, many of whom are undocumented and need multiple services.

“So, we have a home-visitor that gets families connected to community resources,” Russell said. “She provides parental support, education, and child development activities. And she is just there as a support to the families that she works with.”

Canfield said mental health issues of today reflect issues of the past. 

“We actually have paper records that go back that far and when I look at them, they were dealing with issues identical to those of today. That is a little bit disheartening. I don’t know if we’ve improved since the beginning, but we try to respond to how the community is changing.”

James Kilgore, one of the founders of the First Followers reentry program, said the mental health board’s funding is essential.

“Their funding has been absolutely essential for us as we’ve been growing and their way of dealing with ourselves and with formally incarcerated people has been a model for how funders should respond to people that are putting services on the ground,” he said in an interview.

Kilgore said the board gave the program funding to open both a men’s and women’s transition house for people after incarceration. 

He said the way the board operates its grant funding system has been instrumental in assisting the program:

“Our first grant was about $29,000. The mental health board gives you a yearly amount and divides it up by 12 and gives you one-twelfth of the money each month. And that’s really helpful compared to how other funders operate.”

Applications for 2025-26 funding open on Dec. 20, 2024 and end on Feb 10, 2025.