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.