By GEORGE PAWLACZYK AND BETH HUNDSDORFER — News-Democrat
A legislative committee that oversees the Illinois Department of Human Services will meet this month to hear testimony concerning the failure of a state agency to investigate the deaths of at least 53 disabled adults.
The House Human Services Committee will meet at 11 a.m. on July 31 in a hearing room of the Michael A. Blandic Building in Chicago, said the panel’s chairman, State Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago.
The meeting is in response to a series of investigative stories published by the Belleville News-Democrat. The articles reported that adults who lived at home, who were the subject of a hotline complaint to the Department of Human Services’ Inspector General’s Office and died soon afterward were not investigated because of an administrative interpretation of state law that “the dead are ineligible for services.”
The newspaper also reported that the agency turned away hundreds of hotline calls for assistance, declaring them “non-reportable” for various reasons, including that the disabled person could use a telephone to get help on his own and was therefore not truly disabled.
The articles led to the resignation last week of Inspector General William M. Davis, and a broad executive order by Gov. Pat Quinn changing some of the operating procedures of the Office of the Inspector General. Now, all deaths where abuse or neglect are suspected will be investigated and promptly reported to local coroners and law enforcement.
Davis has declined to comment. Brooke Anderson, spokeswoman for Quinn, said the search for a replacement for Davis is under way.
“As I’ve said all along, we want to determine whether this was a failure of people, of a system or of a law,” Harris said, “or of all three. Then we can go about fixing what’s wrong.”
Harris said he will ask that the head of the Human Services Department, Secretary Michelle R.B. Saddler, attend the hearing as well as representatives from the attorney general’s and governor’s offices. He said he also will invite local coroners and police to attend.
“We want to get to the truth of what happened,” Harris said, “and keep it as open-ended as possible. … We need to strengthen protection for disabled adults in Illinois.”