I lived there about 10 years I felt it was time for me to move on I couldn't choose what I was going to eat we lived on $30 a month spending money they just restricted you for everything you did just about as far as therap you know I didn't receive any feel like I was in [Music] prison Illinois historically has relied very heavily on institutional settings you go back to the 1950s they were these huge brick complexes located throughout the state over time in the' 60s and 70s some of them started to redesign the institutions
to have what look like group homes within a campus so unlike some states that really tried to move people from State operated institutions into group homes and Supportive Housing Illinois really depopulated our state institutions into a large system of privately run institutions that were paid for by the government that model exists today the institutions for mental diseases which is a particularly horrible name it had more than 6,000 people the institutions for people with developmental disab abilities both private and public had more than 10,000 and the people in uh nursing homes just in Cook County alone
was close to 20,000 we're talking about tens of thousands of people most of whom we believe almost all of whom we believe could be better served in their own homes in the community in 2004 only 30% of individuals were living in settings for six or fewer by 2006 we had dropped to 51st so we were dead last we also include DC in our analysis which is why we have 51 positions some of the states that have closed their institutions have realized cost Savings of 25 to 50% and we've also seen from the research improved quality
of life increased Choice increases in adaptive skills but I think it's more about a civil rights issue there have been a lot of different efforts um for groups that have been marginalized to really make a difference and to sort of be empowered people with disabilities really didn't start to exercise their rights until much more recently which really eventually then led to the passage of the Ada and pretty much overnight when the law passed when we had that legal tool behind us we were able to get in the door and start having dialogue with people who
run programs and uh operate facilities so that we could be part of the solution that promise as a legal matter was realized in 1999 when the Olstead case was decided and the Supreme Court said yes unnecessarily institutionalizing and segregating people with disabilities is a form of discrimination and is illegal under the Ada because Illinois is so heavily institutionalized we felt like this would finally be the catalyst to make change in Illinois however um uh time passed no plan came uh what they called a plan was really uh just a recitation of those things that they
had already done we gave her the letter to the governor with our demands and she promised that we would get a response right away it was a setup for failure to be very candid a lot of different advocacy groups got together and put out there really where Illinois needed to go and why there had been progress made in the 5 years since almost said have been decided we have the model we know it works we know it's cheaper we know people like it better and we still haven't done it the game plan was to have
a three-pronged wellth thought out uh legal attack on the Illinois system of institutionalization the class action device allowed us to bring together these various uh individuals whose voices might not be heard without a a class action loudspeakers so to speak the system as it was set up was so Byzantine that it was impossible to know who to call I don't know how any lawyer could have made those calls without the brain power and the experience of access living equipped for equality and the ACLU who had been dealing with different facets of these issues for decades
the cases were expensive they were long they were difficult we had three different judges with three different sets of preferences about what would happen we're the only state that I'm aware of that has done a comprehensive approach affecting all the different types of people with disabilities more or less simultaneously I I dream of the day in Illinois and in the rest of the country where the fact that somebody has a disability doesn't dictate where they live that's what we should strive for a society that includes everybody because of these cases thousands of people in Illinois
will have an opportunity to move out of Institutions and to receive services in the community and live the lives they Envision for themselves even people with the most significant disabilities especially people with the most significant disabilities they have demonstrated to the world that they can move mountains which one of them is going to be the next school teacher of your child or the next president or congress person or the next scientist or the next Bill Gates we just don't know until we unleash that potential you don't know how to uh stand up I do I
just don't like to did I just don't like to wa wait wait for your brother
