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Questions About Putting Mentally Ill Into Community Care
The state is promising to get the mentally ill out of nursing homes and into community care; but community care providers say the state's budget proposal makes that impossible.

The promise comes in the proposed settlement of a lawsuit, Williams vs. Quinn, in which advocates for the mentally ill argued that community care is cheaper for the state, and gives the residents more freedom. The state promises to relocate to community settings any residents of two dozen nursing homes designated as "institutions for mental illness" who wish to move.

"But instead of working toward making that happen, as the state has promised in that lawsuit, the state is in fact going to further dismantle an already weak community mental health system by cutting funding to community mental health services," says Mark Heyrman, a University of Chicago Law School professor and chairman of public policy for Mental Health America of Illinois.

The governor's proposed budget cuts funding for community-based care for the mentally ill by $90 million, about 24 percent.

Frank Anselmo, head of the Community Behavioral Healthcare Association, says the care providers won't throw the residents out when the money runs out. That'll be up to the state or the judge.

(Illinois Radio Network)
03 29 10 by Newsroom
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