History
promoting
mental health
INC’s continuing responsibility to the citizens of our seven townships is to assure the availability, accessibility, and continuity of appropriate services for persons with mental illness, intellectual/developmental disabilities, and substance use disorders.
INC Mental Health Alliance
Formerly Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services, Inc., but known throughout the community as “INC,” is an Illinois, not-for-profit corporation which was chartered on April 1969 to promote the creation of local mental health boards authorized under 405 Illinois Compiled Statutes §20/3a (Community Mental Health Act).
In the November 1970 general election, Aurora, Batavia, Big Rock, Blackberry, Kaneville, and Sugar Grove Township voters in Kane County, Illinois, approved a community mental health tax by referendum. Each of the six township boards appointed a seven-member community mental health board, known as a “708” board after the number of the Illinois House of Representatives resolution which created such entities. Virgil Township passed a referendum in November 2000 and appointed a 708 board.
Each 708 board recommends a mental health levy to its respective township board for inclusion among their levy submissions to the county. The county distributes the tax dollars collected to the townships, which remit the mental health portion of the taxes to INC Mental Health Alliance, the administrative body. The combined levies are distributed to agencies for selected, eligible services by the INC Mental Health Alliance.
INC Mental Health Alliance Board of Directors is composed of fifteen (15) members; one member from each of the township 708 Boards, and eight (8) members-at-large elected by the board. Contractual agreements exist between INC and the seven community mental health boards to carry out the work in a regional approach to administration.
INC built and, until 2022, owned the buildings at 400 Mercy Lane, and both 309 and 409 W. New Indian Trail Court. These house not only the INC offices but also the Association for Individual Development, including both the Elizabeth Keeler Center and Thompson Rehabilitation Center, Gateway Foundation in Aurora, and offices for the National Alliance on Mental Illness KDK affiliate. All the buildings are situated on land purchased from Mercy Center for Health Care Services and the Sisters of Mercy. There is still 1.8 acres of undeveloped land.
Building better communities
Annual grants made by INC to local agencies for services to persons with mental illness, developmental disabilities and substance use disorders, using the local mental health tax dollars, are currently over $1.6 million.