Cassidy and Hadden get funds for Chicago nursing homes

 

State Rep. Cassidy

In what seems to be warp speed, the endorsement of State Rep. Kelly Cassidy and 49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden of the Coalition to Strengthen the Ombudsman Program to fully fund and staff the City of Chicago's ombudsman program, “which serves residents in long term care facilities,” according to a press release from the latter’s office, was met with success in a Tuesday announcement, in their effort to fully fund and adequately staff the City of Chicago’s ombudsman program, which was threatened with privatization by the Illinois Department on Aging.

As the statement noted, “Ombudsmen oversee the operations and conditions of nursing homes and long-term care facilities to ensure that residents are treated with humanity and dignity. Ombudsmen develop relationships with residents and act as advocates on their behalf, entrusting them to investigate issues and secure solutions. They act as advocates for residents who often have their needs overlooked.”

On their respective Facebook pages, Cassidy and Hadden Commented that the “the Illinois Department of Aging has secured additional funds to fully staff our City Ombudsman program AND has agreed to cease their plans to privatize it. Our Ombuds are so important to the health and wellbeing of our nursing home residents and have been true heroes throughout this pandemic. Thank you to the Coalition to Strengthen the Ombudsman Program and to our Ombuds”. 

As the Illinois Department of Aging acknowledges on its website: “Mandated by the Federal Older Americans Act and the Illinois Act on Aging, the Illinois Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP) is a resident-directed advocacy program which protects and improves the quality of life for residents in a variety of long-term care settings. Ombudsmen work to resolve problems of individual residents and to bring about changes at the local, state and national levels to improve care.”

The good news was received in an email Cassidy received on Monday, from Deputy Governor Flores, that “the Chicago Department of Family Support Services (DFSS) and the Illinois Department on Aging have been working towards an agreement that provides the City with more funding to hire additional staff,” according to Hadden’s Chief of Staff Leslie Perkins, and “there will no longer be a bid issue for private contracting services, and the program will get to remain housed under DFSS.”

Hadden had said previously, “Throughout this pandemic, residents in our nursing homes were some of the hardest hit by the virus. In the City of Chicago, our Ombudsmen are the workers who act as advocates for those residents. Through this last year, our City Ombudsmen worked tirelessly to support nursing home and long-term care facility residents; often they were the only people outside of staff even allowed in the buildings.” “Despite the vital role they play in supporting our most vulnerable residents, their staffing was allowed to drop to 5 positions from 8 during the most challenging time of the pandemic because the State was planning to privatize the program.”

Alderwoman Hadden

It was not clear why the State and City of Chicago chose this action, or what the exact revenue stream was to fund the positions, but “the decision to privatize the ombudsman program came after the City of Chicago failed to meet staffing requirements set by the state. The state requires ten full-time ombudsmen for the City of Chicago, yet only provides funding for eight employees”.

Reductions had previously occurred with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and continued with his successor, Lori Lightfoot, prompting an earlier report in March by local public radio station WBEZ reporter Chip Mitchell, who wrote: “Lisa Morrison Butler, Chicago’s DFSS commissioner at the time, announced that planned change in a September 2019 email to her department’s employees and pointed to the city’s understaffing of the program: “The reason for the de-designation is that there is a required benchmark of minimum staffing as well as other benchmarks and the program’s overall performance.”

To fully fund and staff the program, she had said,” it would cost approximately an additional $200,000 per year. Included in this year's state budget was a $1 million increase for the Illinois Department on Aging’s long-term care ombudsman program; however, this funding has not been prioritized to keep Chicago's ombudsman program a public service.”

In addition, they warned of the dangers of privatization of services across the country, which has led to “worse service, higher costs, poorer conditions and less accountability.”

The Action Network, a local advocacy organization, had reported in early March, on its website, that, “The ombudsmen are "too expensive". The State of Illinois does not want to fund two more positions because they do not want to pay for collective bargaining protections and an adequate salary of experienced ombuds. They would rather outsource the program, which would then have significantly less power to stand up to nursing home owners, and less pay and less protection from intimidation for the ombudsmen themselves.”

Cassidy has a long legislative record of care in this area, and in 2012 introduced a measure to improve staffing levels in Chicago nursing homes saying at the time ,“As more residents are aging, nursing homes are a vital part of the care that seniors receive and their families rely on,” and that disregarding appropriate levels would greatly affect care.

Expressing her gratitude for Tuesday’s actions, she wrote, “We are so relieved to see that the state and city have heard our communities demands to keep our ombudsman program a public resource. We are continuing to work with activists, ombudsman, nursing home and long term care facility residents to continue to improve this vital program”.

Attempts for a comment from The Illinois Department of Aging Director Paula Basta, and her staff, were unsuccessful by press time.

Lightfoot disses bill for an elected school board

 They said that it could never be done, and that if done it would be a mess for parents and students alike, but on Tuesday, the Illinois State Senate in a 36/15 vote did just that: voted to create an elected school board for Chicago, a first, and one that with a phased in plan would allow for a partial unit in 20125, and a fully elected board in 2027.

While certainly a historic event, and pending House approval and Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signature, there can be pitfalls, as noted in previous discussions, but most prominently was received with more than a soupçon of opposition by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

In an unrelated press event, she was quoted, by The Chicago Tribune: “There were obviously a lot of different agendas at work that led to the bill that passed,” and described “the legislation as one step in a longer process on which there’s still work to do.”

What that entails seems to be murky at best, and her clarification left more questions than answers to most listeners.

“We’re talking about the most consequential change in governance for Chicago Public Schools,” Lightfoot said. “It can’t be about the politics. It’s got to be about the people, and the people that matter most are our children. So we’re going to keep making sure that message gets through and resonates, and I’m confident we can get to a better place.”

A better place that allows for more control? Chicago is the only one of 891 districts in the state that does not have a fully elected school board, noted a coalition of CPS parents, Black and Brown organizers, and others who held a news conference last month urging Sen. President Don Harmon to call the bill for a vote last month. 

Across the country only New York City and Boston have a mayoral appointed board, with most comparable big cities such as Los Angel, Miami, Houston, Las Vegas and Atlanta all having an elected school board.

Certainly no one in politics pretends that every bill passed is perfect, and that compromise is the order of the day, and no more perfect example is this bill.

The Trib also noted, “Despite supporting an elected board during her mayoral campaign, Lightfoot has since supported proposals that would allow the mayor to retain some control of the board.”

From these and earlier comments she seems to object to the loss of mayoral control and that her appointments to the hybrid board are required to be confirmed by the city council. 

This is revealing; not only as a turnabout from her campaign days, but also a creeping resemblance to her predecessor Rahm Emanuel, along with dropping an F bomb to State Sen. Robert Peters, about his senate colleagues, at a recent basketball game, and a desire, she said, that they had thought, ““how ‘we’re gonna **** her.”

We’ve seen this thinned skin approach before, most recently when she nearly toppled negotiations between outgoing school CEO Janice Jackson and the Chicago Teachers Union in a televised melt down.

“The same day the Illinois House passed a different version of the elected school board bill, Lightfoot introduced a plan that would create a hybrid board, with the mayor appointing the majority of members. She has said a 21-member body would be “unwieldy” and objected to the timeline for transitioning away from an appointed board.”

Offering praise, to the efforts, was the CTU, who wrote in a legislative memo published by the Trib: “Thanks to the work of thousands of people — and in particular the members of the (Grassroots Education Movement) coalition — we are one step closer to an elected representative school board,” the CTU wrote. “... And a huge thanks to everyone in the CTU who helped move the bill to this point.”

Lightfoot pledged to “keep our fight where it should be, which is making sure that our children are heard, that their educational futures are secure and that parents have seat at [the] table.”

In a continuation of what can only be called a rant, Lightfoot said, “Why that is so hard for people to understand, why that sense of urgency around those core values is something that some folks in Springfield don’t get, I don’t know. But there has to be accountability for ignoring the people,” continuing, she said. “It’s interesting that this is supposed to be about democracy but what happened in Springfield had nothing to do with democracy. But democracy, mark my word, will prevail.”

it’s not all going to be sunny days ahead, and as we noted, in an interview with former Ald. Dick Simpson, for our long shuttered Examiner column, almost four years ago, he stressed: “An elected school board would get the voice of citizens between the near dictatorial control of Mayor Emanuel and opposition by the Chicago Teachers Union. We citizens pay for the school system and we parents depend upon the system to educate our children. We should have a voice separate from the mayor's that can provide a check and balance to both the mayor and the union.”

He did caution, “Adding to the mix is a racial component that has a system that is mostly African American and Hispanic and an elected board . . .Thus a citywide elected board could tip heavily in favor of whites, and disenfranchised students of color; but the move now leans towards a proposed district election rather than citywide.”

Lightfoot has pledged to keep fighting for a negotiated resolution that reflects “the realities and the necessities of CPS” and planned engagement with “a range of community partners” that have been weighing in on the school board issue. She called on those involved to “get back at the table in a concerted effort to listen to each other” and put students and parents first.

“I don’t believe what came out of the Senate the other day does any of those things,” Lightfoot said.