Dan Baker is known around Milwaukee as an advocate for individuals and families struggling with mental illness. As director of the Crisis Resource Center, Baker has dedicated his career to making sure clients receive the services they need immediately and then take the necessary steps toward recovery, says Nan Bialek, director of communications at the Milwaukee Center For Independence.
Open 24 hours, seven days a week, the Crisis Resource Center is a collaboration of local nonprofits, foundations and government agencies that banded together four years ago to improve the community’s response to people in a mental health crisis. Many of the clients who end up at the Center’s door at 2057 S.14th St. in Milwaukee are referred by county mental health professionals, hospital emergency rooms or law enforcement officials. Clients referred to the center are in some sort of psychiatric crisis but not in need of hospitalization. They are not at a point where they are a danger to themselves or others.
Clients who come to the center are welcomed by a team of therapists, clinicians and trained peer support specialists. Baker and his team address the clients’ immediate needs, from medication issues to finding housing resources to providing calm and caring support.
“For people who are struggling with mental illness, that means everything,” Bialek wrote in nominating Baker and his team for a Health Care Hero Award. Baker is employed by Transitional Living Services, which is a unit of the Milwaukee Center For Independence.
Baker says the demand for the Crisis Resource Center’s services is obvious by how many people walk through the door daily.
“We are consistently at capacity,” he says, noting the center has experienced an increase in people feeling hopeless due to job loss and home foreclosures over the past year. “Individuals affected by the economy are experiencing situations they could never have imagined.”
Baker hopes the Crisis Resource Center’s alternative recovery model – based on partnerships and collaborations between agencies, health care providers, housing resources and other nonprofit organizations – will be replicated in other communities.
“We would love to see that,” Baker says.
