WOODLAWN — A city-run mental health clinic that closed last year in Woodlawn will again be filled with clinicians and caseworkers in the coming months, but will not be open to patients.
Thresholds, a community-based health outreach program, will not treat patients directly in the 6337 S. Woodlawn Ave. building, but will use it as a base of operations. The North Center-based group sends caseworkers and health professionals out to patients’ residences, group homes and public housing to provide care directly in the home or connect patients with clinical care.
“We’re not going to be replicating the services that the clinic provided, nor will we be reopening the clinic,” said Emily Moen, a spokeswoman for Thresholds. “We’re hoping that by locating our teams there we’ll be able to expand our involvement in Woodlawn.
“We’re hoping to locate one of our advanced-practice nurses there, who will be doing psychiatric visits once a week."
Thresholds will move three teams into the building, which is also home to Cook County’s Woodlawn Health Center, later this year, and expects to serve about 200 clients.
Last year, the building was the epicenter of protests of plans by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close six mental health clinics operated by the city.
"We see this in general as one of the most clear examples of what is wrong with the agenda of austerity and privatization," Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a representative with Southside Together Organizing for Power, told the Chicago Reporter in April 2012. More than 30 protesters were arrested for barricading themselves inside the clinic and camping out in front of the clinic.
The city and Mayor’s Office at the time said the city could no longer afford to operate the clinic.
The clinic formerly treated about 500 patients, who have since been redirected for mental health services to the Greater Grand Mental Health Clinic at 4314 S. Cottage Grove Ave., operated by the city’s Department of Public Health.
