Advocacy
Youth and families face systematic barriers that individual or school- or community-based care alone cannot address. This is why we have a Policy and Advocacy Department that works to transform systems.
Issue Areas
End the School-to-Prison Nexus
- Raise awareness about the factors contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline in our community.
- Advocate for policy changes at the local and state levels that reduce suspensions, expulsions, and arrests in schools.
Improve Access to Mental Health Services
- Increase awareness of the importance of mental health services for young people.
- Advocate for funding and policies that expand mental health services in schools and communities
Campaigns
Public Health and Safety Campaign
Alternatives is a part of the Public Health and Safety Campaign, in which we are asking for a reallocation of $300M in a CPD slush fund of vacancies and overtime abuse the following:
- Preserve and expand youth jobs and programs proven to reduce community violence
- Permanently fund and scale the non-police crisis response (CARE teams) citywide
- Permanently fund and scale mental health centers citywide
- Protect funding for the Chicago Department of Public Health
- Purchase 20 additional ambulances and increase staffing per rig for the Chicago Fire Department
Treatment not Trauma Campaign
We are a leader in the Collaborative for Community Wellness which leads the Treatment Not Trauma campaign. The campaign demands for
1) the reopening of all public mental health centers across Chicago and
2) a nonpolice crisis response team.
We are currently making our demands in coalition with others as a part of the Public Health and Safety Campaign.
Mental Health in Schools Campaign
We endorse the Mental Health in Schools Campaign, which builds off of the work of Cops Out CPS in order to expand non-carceral care for youth in CPS, specifically addressing how involuntary hospitalization is an extension of the carceral practices in schools.
Evidence Based Formula
For too long, our school funding has relied on property taxes, which perpetuate the legacy of segregation and redlining. In 2017, IL passed a revolutionary formula called Evidence Based Formula (EBF), which assesses each district’s needs, from their current staff-student ratios to the number of diverse learners in the district. But we are far from adequately funding all of our school districts in IL. This is why we are an active member of the Funding Illinois’s Future coalition demanding for an increase in school funding across IL.
We urge our state officials to allocate at least $550 million in additional funds to strengthen the EBF formula. Funding is an essential barrier to remove when making mental health care accessible to all students across the state. Join us here.