The recent Tribune article detailing shocking conditions in a private psychiatric hospital serving emotionally troubled wards of the Department of Children and Family Services (“Kids treated in squalor at hospital, state finds,” Page 1, Dec. 12) should come as no real surprise to mental health advocates in Illinois.
Indeed, while Illinois’ public-sector mental health system has steadily improved under the drumbeat of pressure from federal court lawsuits, news media exposure and reform efforts generated by the advocacy community, no such scrutiny has ever been consistently focused on private-sector hospitals.
Even more troubling–since Illinois mental health officials now seem determined to privatize away as much of their responsibility for serving persons with mental illnesses as they can–who will ensure that the same questionable practices and substandard conditions that once plagued state-operated public hospitals will not re-emerge in the private-sector facilities?
Thus far the Department of Human Services has assumed little responsibility for either adults or children who are transferred from their facilities to other facilities, including private hospitals and intermediate care facilities. Nor is any government agency willing to undertake this important responsibility. It will take independent and aggressive monitoring of the sort conducted by groups like the Mental Health Association in Illinois and the Alliance for the Mentally Ill to ensure that extremely vulnerable adults and children are protected from the abuse reported by the Tribune. We also need such monitoring to ensure that public dollars are being appropriately spent in private facilities.
The Mental Health Association in Illinois and other advocacy groups have already demonstrated how such programs directly serve the public interest. Illinois officials should now go the extra step by authorizing programs of unannounced citizen-monitoring of any private-sector facility where public dollars are being spent.
