North Side nursing home the target of federal investigation Special audit under way at Somerset Place
"In recent articles, the Tribune chronicled lawbreaking by facility residents and the murder of one, Maratta Walker, who had been prostituting herself and using crack cocaine while living there.
From April 2008 to July 2009, records show, Chicago police investigated 15 alleged assaults or batteries inside Somerset, as well as five reported cases of criminal sexual assault and another five reports of narcotics possession. State public health authorities last year cited the home for failing to monitor and treat mentally ill patients."
Read all about it here in the Tribune.
If true, the statistics on this place and the concentration of fellons are pathetic. Good luck over there...
ReplyDeleteI'm sure this isn't lost on anyone, but poorly run social services in Uptown will no longer escape accountablity with thier continued stonewalling and their support for the re-election of Alderman Shiller.
ReplyDeleteState lawmakers, the media and Federal agencies have now joined frustrated Uptown neighbors in their fight to bring accountability to poorly run Uptown institutions. The Feds and the media are not going away anytime soon. Neither are the state lawmakers or the neighbors.
Rather than take a continued "%&ck you, we're going rogue" approach to working with the community, Uptown social services better find a new way to appear moderate and to be good neighbors if they hope to stay in the good graces of the Uptown community.
It seems that supporting a licenced social worker like James Cappleman for Alderman would be a natural next step for them, but we'll see how all of this plays out. It's very possible some will lose their funding long before the election anyway.
Zesty.... Sommerset is actually in Mary Ann Smith's ward. She is no better than Shiller. It seems like Shiller likes to have the Sec 8 as her base and May Ann smith goes for the homeless shelters and nursing homes full of convicts.
ReplyDeleteI like at Leland / Sheridan and demographically, a lot of the crap that happened during the summer wasn't all Shillers fault (trust me I'm no fan of Shiller). May Ann Smith gave me a bad taste in my mouth when I was living in the Hollywood / Ridge area where she tried to put in a "temporary" mens homeless shelter smack dab in the the middle of a residential area.
The best way to remove a lot of the ills of Uptown is two fold. Both Smith and Shiller need to be removed.
You can never improve an area when you concerntrate people who don't care to uplift their circumstances into areas with other like mined individuals. If you litter and live with those that litter, you get a filthy neighborhood.
The city needs to scatter Section 8 housing though out the city. I'd love to live in the gold coast however I can afford it. Do i have a right to live there? U bet, but I need to afford it. If you are getting subsidized housing, you have no right to dictate where you should live. I don't get that choice. I live where i can afford it. It not a right, its a privilege.
As a Social Worker who has worked with Somerset and many of the other nursing homes in the Uptown, Edgewater area, I can tell you that things going on a Somerset if anything, have improved in the past 18 mo. Not that it is a nice place, it is not. They do very poor treatment with the mentally ill. But Mary Ann has known for many years that this home and many many more in her ward do substandard care and has heard about it from her ward residents. Why all the attention now? It appears that it is simply in response to all the media attention. I can tell you there are many more homes in her ward that are no better than Somerset where is all her public frustration with those homes? Working with a substance abusing, Mentally Ill population is extremely difficult work and qualified staff needs to be hired to work with this population. This costs significantly more money then hiring high school graduates, as many of these homes appear to do.
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