Citing the possibility of “irreparable injury,” a Cook County judge Tuesday gave a troubled group home business four hours to turn over 18 adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities so they could be moved to safer homes.
The decision seemed to end a standoff between Disability Services of Illinois and the state’s Department of Human Services, which had revoked the license of the group home network last month and sought to transfer its residents to new facilities. Disability Services, however, was obstructing caseworkers from doing their jobs, according to the state.
But Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Pantle’s 4 p.m. deadline came and went Tuesday without any action. Then at 5 p.m., Disability Services dropped off five residents but not the others, a Human Services spokeswoman said.
Tuesday night, Disability Services CEO Reuben Goodwin Sr. told the Tribune that the “guardians or family members” of the 13 others picked them up. “I don’t know what they’re going to do,” he said.
Illinois State Police were helping caseworkers locate the 13 individuals Tuesday night, the Human Services spokeswoman said.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Pantle said she was especially troubled by affidavits from caseworkers and a state doctor who examined residents after they were moved from Disability Services. They alleged that some Disability Services residents hadn’t been getting their medicines and one was malnourished.
In addition, the affidavits alleged that some residents who remained in the homes had no blankets or comforters despite the plunging temperatures.
“I can’t have residents living in an unlicensed facility where they’re not getting care, where they’re not getting medication,” Pantle said.
She ordered Disability Services to pack warm clothing and at least a 24-hour supply of medications. Said Pantle, “Their care and safety is the most important thing.”
The Tribune’s “Suffering in Secret” investigation exposed injuries and deaths linked to neglect at group homes, including one run by Disability Services, which until earlier this year went by the name Southwest Disabilities Services & Supports.
After the Tribune in November questioned Human Services officials about serious problems at businesses run by Goodwin, state inspectors blanketed his company’s group homes, determined that all 45 residents faced an “imminent risk” of harm and revoked the license. The state immediately began finding new homes for those residents.
Immediately following the hearing, Goodwin said he would honor the judge’s order. “Hopefully they’ll transition into really good places,” Goodwin said. He added: “I do feel kind of betrayed.”
His network includes seven homes on the South Side and in the south suburbs; the Department of Human Services closed an eighth home last month.
According to the affidavits, state contractors attempting to relocate residents said Disability Services employees had barred their entry, threatened to call police or turned off the lights and acted as if nobody was home.
One resident’s “whereabouts have been unknown” for 10 days, the state alleged in its court filing. Disability Services “staff refused to bring D.K. to the door or allow me to interact with him,” a case manager wrote. Caseworkers returned to the home on four subsequent days, but nobody was there.
The moves and commotion have been unsettling for some of the residents.
Tinley Park police on Nov. 29 had to intervene when Disability Services workers without authorization picked up two residents from a day program and brought them back to a Disability Services group home even though they already had been moved to homes managed by a different provider, according to the affidavit of a caseworker.
Days later, Goodwin complained to the caseworker’s employer that those two residents were upset, and one was threatening suicide, the affidavit said. The caseworker said her company checked with the new provider, who said the individuals “were sad to leave their friends but were fine.”
When a caseworker showed up at a Disability Services group home at 6:30 a.m., Disability Services employee Christine Moore said she was taking the residents bowling. When the caseworker noted that bowling alleys aren’t open that early, Moore told her she had other residents to pick up, according to an affidavit.
Moore was the Southwest Disabilities employee in 2012 who made up a story about what happened to Deron Hardge, a young man with autism who was rushed from his Harvey group home to the hospital in a coma, his body ice cold.
Moore later admitted in a deposition that she didn’t show up for work that morning and gave a false account to save her job, the Tribune revealed in its November investigation. The Office of Inspector General for Human Services, who had ruled the case “unsubstantiated” and sealed it, reopened the neglect investigation when the Tribune shared the details of his office’s bungled investigation.
In the affidavits filed in court, caseworkers and a state doctor this week made disturbing new allegations about the conditions of some of the Disability Services residents whom they were able to move to new homes. One 39-year-old man was malnourished and unkempt, had a bed sore and suffered extreme curvature of the spine “likely from prolonged sitting or chronically limited physical activity,” a state doctor wrote in an affidavit.
“He appeared to be in ill health with evidence of weight loss and with extreme muscle wasting over his entire body,” the doctor added.
When case managers went to move another resident, they found his seizure and behavior medication was missing, and tests later showed the man had very little of that medicine in his system, a caseworker alleged in an affidavit. Disability Services told the case managers that he had run out of the drug and didn’t know whether anyone reordered it, the affidavit said.
The family of another resident said he lost about 80 pounds in his seven months at Disability Services; yet his medication wasn’t adjusted to reflect the weight change, the state alleged. Disability Services would not give caseworkers another resident’s clothing and medication, forcing the state to get medicines from a local hospital and clothes from the new provider, according to the state’s court filing.
After the hearing, Goodwin said the state’s allegations weren’t true but added, “We couldn’t prove it today.”
An attorney for Disability Services blamed the Tribune for the state’s sudden interest in his client, arguing that Human Services officials who on Tuesday faced harsh questioning from lawmakers over their lax oversight of group homes were trying to look tough. The attorney, Michael Kelly, said some of the residents had been with his client for more than 15 years and didn’t want to leave.
Last week, Human Services Secretary James Dimas gave Goodwin an ultimatum, warning that his department would fine the business $2,000 a day if his employees didn’t bring remaining residents to a Tinley Park office where caseworkers were ready to meet with them about new placements. Nobody from Disability Services showed up.
Instead, Goodwin responded with an email accusing the state of an “unfair political and racist attack.” He told the state’s chief licensing official he would see her in court.
Goodwin in that Dec. 6 email also threatened to expose what he called the “unfair placements, corruption and backdoor tactics to preserve a modern day slave selling and trading of people with disabilities to well connected agencies and difficult to place people to small black owned agencies.”
pcallahan@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @TribuneTrish