A troubled state-run facility housing developmentally disabled residents will be restructured after months of media reports about resident abuse by staff and attempts to cover it up. Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Wednesday that half of the residents from the Choate Developmental Center in southern Illinois will move to other state or community sites. Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine will take a role in redesigning the purpose of Choate. Pritzker has hired a chief resident safety officer for the state’s developmental centers, and other changes are planned. Months of reports from three media groups detailed accounts of staff abuse and resident misconduct.
Underfunding, coupled with a widespread worker shortage that makes it difficult to recruit and retain qualified employees stymied progress, Pritzker said. Some adjustments were ineffective. With money in the budget, the governor said transformational change can occur.
“When people are being charged, when they’re being held accountable, it’s clear that there’s an enormous amount that needs to be done. And even before that, we had been starting to do that work,” Pritzker said. “Big transformational planning had been underway, but this is not something you can snap your fingers and fix it. You can hold people accountable. You can arrest people who are breaking the law, and that’s been done.
The Human Services Department will also add 10 investigators to the staff of the agency's inspector general. Illinois lags other states in following a 40-year-old trend to house people with developmental disabilities in the community instead of institutions, bolstered by 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a federal judge later determined Illinois was not living up to, thus ordering change.
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