- Home
- About Us
- Better Care
- Our Book
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Before Your Mother Enters The Nursing Home
- Chapter 2: The First Day
- Chapter 3: Your Mother's Room and Her Property
- Chapter 4: Making the Most of Visits
- Chapter 5: What Should Happen in the First Weeks
- Chapter 6: Planning Your Mother's Care
- Chapter 7: The Care Plan Conference
- Chapter 8: Working With a Hospice
- Chapter 9: Activities
- Chapter 10: Paying For Nursing Home Care
- Chapter 11: If the Nursing Home Wants to Discharge Your Mother
- Chapter 12: Dealing With Problems Yourself
- Chapter 13: Getting Help With Problems
- Fact Sheets
- Minimum Staffing
- Our Book
- Family Councils
- What is a Family Council?
- Why are Family Councils Important?
- Benefits of a Family Council
- What Do Family Councils Do?
- The Rights of Family Councils
- How to Start a Family Council
- Why Smart Nursing Homes Want Family Councils
- Tips to Nursing Home Staff for Starting a Family Council
- Where Can I Find a Family Council?
- Resources for Your Family Council
- Looking for a Nursing Home
- Getting Help
- Advocacy
- Support Us
- Contact Us
In the Illinois Legislature
The spring session of the Illinois Legislature adjourned May 31. Considering the wretched condition of the Illinois state budget, programs designed to help seniors and younger people with disabilities stay home, instead of being forced into nursing homes, did pretty well. The Legislature passed a $334 million supplemental appropriation to the 2013 fiscal year budget, to restore funding for home- and community-based progams such as home care, adult day care, and home-delivered meals. And it passed a final budget that seems to have sheltered these programs from the nasty cuts that were a good bet to happen, just a few months earlier. With luck, this will mean that these vital social service agencies will not be facing massive layoffs and closures. FInally, it passed the Medicaid expansion bill that should give several hundred thousand Illinoisans access to non-emergency medical care.
On the nursing home front, developments were not so good. The same bill that expanded Medicaid, gave the owners of the two dozen nursing homes that house mostly people with a serious mental illness, the authority to provide a new set of mental health services to a new set of clientele. This despite the fact that this group of facilities has a terrible a track record of providing decent care and equipping residents for the non-institutional independence they deserve. Not only are these nursing home owners to be allowed to provide various emergency and short-term mental health rehabilitation services, they are the ONLY ones who will be getting funding to do so, over the vociferous protests of the non-profit community mental health agencies. The rest of the nursing home industry got other provisions in the same bill aimed at weaking enforcement efforts by the Illinois Department of Public Health.
ICBC testified before the House Human Services committee about various provisions of the bill that weakened or eliminated existing protections for the residents of the nursing homes housing people with a serious mental illness. Thanks to Representative Kelly Cassidy, the testimony resulted in the only negotiations abou the nursing home provisions that occurred on the bill. (Not just ICBC, but all other advocates -- even the Department of Public Health -- had been refused any accesss to negotiations.) ICBC was able to get some resident rights protections restored, and Public Health was able to soften the impact of the enforcement provisions somewhat, but the nursing home provisions remain a testimony to what money can buy.
(Hint: If you "like us" on Facebook, you will automatically get our legislative alerts. We promise they will be timely, and only about bills where we believe public scrutiny will make a difference. In other words, not the stuff we think we have covered.)