| ABOUT C4 |
| | about us
Since 1972, C4 has been successfully helping individuals and families who are struggling with mental illness, emotional trauma, substance abuse and the aftermath of sexual assault recover and heal their lives. Through our compassionate and community-based services, we have helped them return to work or school, reestablish personal relationships, keep their homes, and live as good neighbors.
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| | our mission
Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (C4), a behavioral health advocate and social service provider, offers quality, comprehensive customer-oriented services tailored to the diversity of its consumers. |
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| | our vision
Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (C4) will be and will be recognized as, essential to the well-being of the communities we serve.
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| | history
C4, formerly the Edgewater Uptown Community Mental Health Center, opened its doors on July 1, 1972. The founders established the agency as a grassroots response to a government policy called deinstitutionalization, a policy that left to communities the task of developing care for people who were released from psychiatric hospitals into neighborhoods ill-equipped to provide for their needs. Many of these people came to the Edgewater and Uptown communities because of available low rent rooms. For many, it was, literally, the end of the line.
Organized as the Edgewater-Uptown Community Mental Health Council, concerned local residents applied for a federal grant to open a facility. The process became a community forum dedicated to building an effective mental health delivery system.
Participants agreed unanimously on the need for family-centered services; substance abuse treatment; a flexible crisis-response system to keep mentally ill patients in the community whenever possible; programs to care for people after their hospital release; and services for the growing aged population.
In their funding application, council members eloquently described the plight of some 8,000 Uptown and Edgewater neighbors discharged from state hospitals: "If qualifying for service is commensurate with length of time denied service, then these former patients have been standing in line for as many as 40 years. The problem is huge, the solution doubtful, but our debt is clear. We cannot repay 40 years of institutional confinement, but we can provide a more meaningful experience and, perhaps, re-kindle hope and the spark of motivation...the people of the area are concerned with local participation in or control over community-based services. They are concerned with maintaining their relatives in treatment in the local community; they are concerned with avoiding long-term hospitalization in distant institutions; and they are becoming aware of ways in which to treat mental illness and emotional problems. They have joined together to organize, help fund, and operate a comprehensive mental health center in their community."
Since 1972, C4 has continually developed programs to address a multitude of behavioral health and social problems that exist in the community—especially for those living in poverty. C4 has established a reputation in the Illinois mental health community and beyond as a top-notch provider offering cutting-edge clinical services and sensitivity in serving racially, ethnically and economically diverse communities.
Today, C4 programs have expanded to eight locations serving residents not only in Edgewater and Uptown, but across the city of Chicago and into some north and west suburbs. The agency's name change in 1991 reflected that expansion.
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| | demographics
C4 helps approximately 7,000 people annually and 2,500 monthly with the following demographics:
African American 42%
White 28%
Hispanic 23
Bi-Racial 2%%
Asian 2%
Native American 1%
Other 2%
92% of people helped by C4 live below the poverty level (defined as $19,000 for a family four.)
52% of people helped by C4 have no income.
44% of people helped by C4 have no insurance.
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