Employees, local lawmakers rally against layoffs, service cuts at Choate

ANNA — Union leaders, lawmakers and political candidates gathered alongside dozens of employees from the Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center on Tuesday to rally against the state’s plan to make dramatic cuts to staff and services at the downstate mental health facility.

One after another, they took the microphone on the back of a bright green pickup truck as signs and chants of “Save Choate” echoed through the streets of downtown Anna.

The Illinois Department of Human Services announced the changes in a July 23 letter to Choate staff. The three-year plan includes eliminating the state-run facility’s entire general residential program for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, reducing the number of civil mental health beds, and laying off about 250 employees by March 2027.

“Shame on IDHS,” Ona “Tina” Rivero Winfield, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 141 told the crowd. “They sent us the memo — but where are they now?”

AFSCME — the union that represents the majority of Choate staff — organized Tuesday’s rally to condemn the decision by IDHS, asking that it be reversed.

Choate currently serves 58 people across its general and forensic developmental disabilities programs and 75 mental health patients. The state-run mental health hospital employs roughly 524 people across its Anna campus and is one of the region’s largest employers.

‘When we fight, we win’

Winfield said this is just the beginning of many rallies, vowing that AFSCME will continue to host them until the decision is reversed.

Accompanying Winfield was Jason Woolard, president of the Southern Illinois Central Labor Council, who warned that the ramifications of this decision would reach far beyond the facility.

“We cannot allow for this to happen at this facility,” Woolard said. “The residual impacts are going to be dramatic.”

Many who gathered worried about what would become of their jobs.

Koda Leslie, a mental health technician who has worked at Choate for about a year and a half, said he expects to be among those laid off because of his lack of seniority.

“I felt distraught,” Leslie said of hearing the news. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do. People like me that don’t have a lot of seniority, we’re pretty much not gonna have a job. I expect to get laid off for sure.”

Leslie said he hopes the weekly demonstrations continue to garner attention until the state changes course.

“Man, I just hope to see everybody coming out and supporting us next Tuesday, and every Tuesday after that,” Leslie said. “I’m hoping to see things change and that all of us get to keep our jobs.”

Sylvester “King Mo” Morse, a participant at Tuesday’s rally, is not a Choate employee, but lives in Anna and has multiple personal ties to the facility.

“My sister worked there, and my aunt worked there for 19 years,” Morse said, but that’s not his only connection to Choate.

“When I was a kid, they said I was a problem, so they sent me to Choate to a school that used to help problem kids,” Morse said. “It helped me a lot. It made me become better and helped me get along with people. I believe that they’re just way more than Choate Mental Health.”

Eddie Caumiant, AFSCME Council 31’s southern Illinois regional director, told demonstrators to make their opposition impossible for state leaders to miss.

“If the governor flies over in his helicopter, we want him to see us fighting him,” Caumiant said. “When we fight, we win.”

‘We need Choate’

Gov. JB Pritzker recently defended the IDHS decision during a July 28 news conference and bill signing, saying the staffing cuts follow the relocation of residents from Choate’s general developmental disabilities program. The downsizing of Choate’s developmental disabilities population followed reporting by Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica outlining the severe mistreatment of patients by staff and a culture of coverup that had persisted for years, despite state and federal regulators repeatedly citing problems and calling for improvements.

“Remember, the reason there are staff reductions is because we have literally moved the developmentally disabled residents there to better facilities,” Pritzker said. “At some point, you don’t need staff when there is nobody at that facility.”

However, Choate employees and local officials argued Tuesday that the state should expand — not reduce — mental health services in southern Illinois, where they said jails, courts and treatment providers are already struggling to find beds for people in crisis.

IDHS plans to “phase down” all 75 civil mental health beds at Choate while adding beds at Madden Mental Health Center in Chicago. The agency said the shift, which is scheduled to be completed by March 2027, reflects that the “need for mental health beds is greater in northern Illinois.”

Jackson County Assistant State’s Attorney Travis Fleming, who handles mental health cases, told Capitol News Illinois that people are already waiting in the county jail for placement in the state’s forensic mental health system.

“We do have individuals waiting for transport for fitness sitting in our jail currently,” Fleming said.

Fitness restoration is a process for defendants who, because of mental illness, do not understand the legal proceedings against them or cannot work with their attorneys. Treatment is intended to help them understand the judicial process so they can participate in their own defense.

Homer “Chip” Markel, the Democratic candidate for Illinois House District 118, aimed his remarks directly toward Pritzker.

“Governor … you should stand up and reverse the decision of IDHS,” Markel said.

State Sen. Paul Jacobs, a Republican from Pomona who represents Illinois’ 59th District, said that the demand for mental health treatment is not limited to Chicago or northern Illinois.

“We are in mental health crises across the state,” Jacobs said. “We need Choate.”

Union County State’s Attorney Tyler Tripp said that his office repeatedly encounters the lack of available treatment space.

“Illinois is in a mental health crisis, and what I always hear in my office is that we have no more room here,” Tripp said.

Tripp said that hundreds of forensic patients across Illinois are waiting in jails for appropriate treatment in a state mental health facility.

“There are hundreds of people sitting in jail with their mental health declining,” Tripp said. “State operations like Choate should not just remain open — they should be expanded.

“Any loss of a member of staff or any patient is unacceptable,” he added.

Tripp rejected the IDHS explanation that demand is greater in the northern part of the state.

“The need for mental health beds is greater than we can currently handle across the entire state — not just northern Illinois,” he said.

Republican state Rep. Scott Doody, an Anna resident who represents Illinois’ 118th District, has repeatedly condemned the reductions at Choate, and did so again while addressing the crowd.

“I’m here today to support you all,” Doody said. “Employees and patients aren’t just numbers published on a spreadsheet.”

SIU reports unpublished

IDHS said in its original letter that the changes at Choate are a result of the “success” of the state’s three-year plan, which aimed to repurpose the facility in partnership with the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

As part of that partnership, SIU evaluated how Choate’s campus, workforce and programs could be repurposed. Its initial recommendations included preserving and retraining existing employees, retaining and potentially expanding civil mental health services, adding forensic psychiatric care and converting unused space for step-down treatment, crisis services, housing and other community programs.

The first phase of SIU’s Choate Transformation Report, published July 14, 2023, said that two additional phases were planned. Phase 2, which was due Dec. 31, 2023, was expected to make recommendations concerning the safety of both people receiving care and Choate employees. Phase 3 was expected to make recommendations concerning Illinois’ statewide systems of care for people with developmental disabilities and serious mental illness over the following two to three years.

Neither Phase 2 nor Phase 3 appear to have been made public.

SIU School of Medicine’s 2020-25 Strategic Plan Progress Report, published July 3, 2025, said the university supported the “Choate Project” and worked with IDHS’ Division of Developmental Disabilities to advance workforce and care improvements.

An October 2024 IDHS announcement said the decision to add as many as 25 mental health beds at Choate was “informed by recommendations” from SIU. The agency said SIU continued to shape the transformation through campus repurposing recommendations, staff training initiatives and assessments of safety, patient care and workforce needs, but it did not attach the underlying reports, assessments or recommendations.

IDHS’ 2026-2030 Strategic Planning Roadmap, released in May, also describes the Choate initiative as a three-year partnership with SIU. It lists four objectives: reducing the developmental disabilities population by 123, increasing mental health bed capacity, implementing safety enhancements and expanding support for community living.

Jacobs defended SIU’s role in the process and said the school’s work did not call for the cuts IDHS announced.

“SIU is not at fault for this,” Jacobs said. “In fact, their report was very thorough and clear.”

Winfield told the dozens of people lining the streets of downtown Anna that workers agreed to participate in SIU’s evaluation because they believed it could strengthen Choate.

“There is power in numbers,” Winfield said. “Three years ago they had us at the bargaining table telling us that they were going to repurpose Choate. We agreed to let SIU come in and evaluate the facility — and they actually made some great recommendations. They said that we should be expanding mental health services. They said that there is a need for us — and I’m here to tell you all that there absolutely is.”

Culture of cruelty

The IDHS decision to reduce operations at Choate comes after decades of documented issues at the southern Illinois facility, including resident abuse, neglect, criminal investigations and repeated failures by employees and administrators to report or stop misconduct.

A 2022 investigation by Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica found that residents had been beaten, sexually assaulted, humiliated and dangerously neglected at Choate for roughly a decade. At least 26 employees have been arrested on felony charges connected to their work at the facility while they were entrenched in a “code of silence” in which workers withheld information, coordinated their accounts or protected colleagues accused of abuse.

In March 2023, Pritzker announced a three-year “transformation” plan that would move about 123 residents — roughly half of Choate’s population at the time — into community placements, family homes or other state-operated facilities. The state also promised stronger oversight, additional training, cameras in common areas and a partnership with the SIU School of Medicine to help determine how Choate’s remaining programs should operate.

Officials said at the time that the plan was not a closure and did not include layoffs. Choate’s general developmental disabilities population has since fallen from 199 residents at the beginning of the transformation to 16. IDHS now characterizes the elimination of those units and the phaseout of Choate’s civil mental health beds as the completion of that plan — though the layoffs mark a departure from the state’s original assurance that the restructuring would not cost employees their jobs.

AFSCME said the administration assured the union during the recent legislative session that its proposed fiscal year 2027 budget would not include layoffs. AFSCME responded to the announcement in a news release with comments from Council 31 Executive Director Roberta Lynch, who said that IDHS should have consulted with the union to develop a more rational plan that would be more fair to Choate’s employees and the individuals in their care.

“Had we been aware of the planned layoffs, we certainly would have opposed the budget as introduced,” Lynch said. “The AFSCME collective bargaining agreement with the state of Illinois includes well-defined rights for employees slated for layoff, and AFSCME intends to ensure that all such requirements are fully met if the department continues down this irresponsible path.”

Jackson Brandhorst is a student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and a senior member of the Daily Egyptian, SIU’s student newspaper. He can be reached at jbrandhorst@dailyegyptian.com.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.