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Exclusive: Loophole allows 'flop houses' for mentally ill
By Alex Parker July 30, 2009The South Side group home that waited six days to notify a mentally ill resident's family of hisdisappearance earlier this month was in business even though its parent company is dissolved, itsproperty has been foreclosed upon, its business office is boarded up and its phones are disconnected.No one was monitoring the situation at the Bridging the Gap facility because a legal loophole in Illinoisallows such community homes to care for a fragile mental health population without state regulation or supervision, a Daily News investigation shows.“It’s another one of those horrifying little sidebars in public mental health policy in Illinois,” says TonyZipple, CEO of Thresholds, an organization that provides services to about 7,000 mentally ill Chicagoans.“These places are essentially unregulated.”Shalom Carter, 32, walked away from the Bridging the Gap community living facility on July 5. He wasfound 18 days later after he'd walked about 13 miles from the home to a suburban Cook County bar,where he was then arrested and placed in a mental health facility.Bridging the Gap's Web site says it is a non-profit communal living facility that provides services toresidents with physical or mental challenges.It offers 24-hour monitoring, medication management, case management and psychosocial rehabilitationconducted by "credentialed care teams," at three South Side locations, the site says.But a trip to those locations provides a different picture.One of the homes has been vacant for about a month, neighbors say, and the other is boarded up. Allthree homes have been foreclosed upon, records show.The address listed as Bridging the Gap's business offices is boarded up, and has been for years,according to neighbors. Phone numbers for the homes are disconnected; a phone number for thebusiness office directs callers to another number that goes unanswered.On two recent evening visits, a resident told a Daily News reporter that no staff members were presentbecause they were working other jobs.Records at the Illinois Secretary of State's office show the company was incorporated as a nonprofit in2007, but was dissolved in 2008 after failing to file an annual report.Incorporation documents list the company's officers as Cynthia Berry, Tanya Lee and Toya Westbrook.Berry and Lee could not be reached for comment.Westbrook says Berry approached her to help start Bridging the Gap. But Westbrook quickly realizedBerry and Lee did not know enough about providing mental health services to run a business.
 
“I didn’t know much about it. That’s why I got out of it,” says Westbrook, who says she withdrew from thebusiness after about a week. “They started something, but they didn’t know what they were doing.”
Strict standards
Other states have strict rules regarding regulation of group homes.Florida, for example, requires all homes providing mental health services to be certified by the state andto have a nurse on staff.“I think there is somewhat of an understanding, at least in Florida, if you put your loved one in a facilitywith a license…there’s at least some minimum standards of oversight for those facilities,” says Dr. J. PaulRollings, a regional director of mental health services for Florida's Department of Children and FamilyServices.New York’s laws dictate homes providing services to five or more unrelated people be licensed, andrequire swift notification of missing residents.Michigan outlines the duties expected of staff members at so-called adult foster care homes.In Illinois, several agencies share regulation of homes for the mentally ill.The Illinois Department of Public Health certifies homes that include nursing care. The Department of Human Services certifies nearly 2,500 homes that receive state and federal dollars to care for thementally ill, but does not license those that receive no government money. The Department of Childrenand Family Services certifies foster homes and day care for children.Cathy Cumpston, chief of DHS's Bureau of Accreditation, Licensure and Certification, says it’s notuncommon for group homes in Illinois to operate with no oversight.“Quite often in settings where people with mental illness live, there’s no licensure from (the Department of Public Health). DHS has no licensing standards for homes for people with mental illness,” she says.The state does not allow hospitals to discharge mental health patients to unlicensed group homesbecause they are “are not adequate for provision of mental health care,” says Dan Wasmer, actingregional director of DHS's mental health division.But it does not stop such homes from caring for other patients outside of government-funded programs.“A person can say they provide (mental health services) and charge somebody for it, but if the person’swilling to pay for it directly, they don’t have to be involved with (the mental health department) at all,”Wasmer says.
Rogue homes
Mental health advocates say the state's patchwork of regulation allows the operation of rogue homes,which receive no state or federal money and can operate by their own rules, sometimes to the detrimentof mentally ill residents.“What they amount to is really unregulated boarding homes,” says Zipple, the Thresholds CEO.
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