Company Profile
Ecker Center for Mental Health
Company Overview
Founded in 1955, the Ecker Center is the only non-profit outpatient community mental health center serving the northern two-thirds of Kane County, and Barrington and Hanover Townships. We provide comprehensive behavioral health services to adults with moderate to severe mental illnesses, the majority of whom are low and very low income people. Services include: psychiatry, nursing, case management, individual and group therapy, rehabilitation groups, crisis intervention and residential programs. We are accredited by The Joint Commission.
Company History
Beginning in 1952, the Elgin Association for Mental Health President Maureen Withers directed the work of volunteers from St. Joseph and Sherman Hospitals to establish the Fox Valley Mental Health Center. The Center was opened in 1955 at Sherman Hospital to provide psychiatric and related services such as therapy, case management and psychological testing that were affordable for all who required them. In its first year of operation the Center served 55 adults and children.
Dene Ecker was the organization’s first executive director and the Fox Valley Mental Health Center was renamed the Ecker Center for Mental Health in 1983, a year after he retired. During the deinstitutionalization movement in the 1970’s the Center began working closely with adults who were released from the Elgin Mental Health Center (state psychiatric hospital). When capacity at the Elgin Mental Health Center was again reduced in 2003, the Ecker Center assumed more responsibility for adults with very severe mental illnesses. Beginning in the 1980’s children and adolescent mental health services increasingly became the responsibility of the Family Service Association of Greater Elgin.
The center added programs and service locations throughout the years. In the late 1950’s it moved into a house on Division Street in Elgin. In 1983 the Psychiatric Emergency Program was opened at Sherman Hospital and a Crisis Residential Program was opened on McLean Boulevard in Elgin. In 1986 satellite offices were opened in Hanover Park and St. Charles. Group homes were added in 1990 and 2004 and supervised apartments were added in 2001 and 2004. In 1994 the Ecker Center purchased its largest service location at 1845 Grandstand Place in Elgin.
Currently Ecker Center serves ten townships in the northern two-thirds of Kane County and two townships which are mainly in Cook County. In FY 2012 it served 3,540 adults with mental illnesses and their families.