Article Summary About half of the staff of 524 employees will be laid off at the Choate Mental Health and Development Center in southern Illinois amid operational changes. The Illinois Department of Human Services stated the changes are part of a three-year plan aimed at repurposing the facility. There is now a greater need for mental health beds in northern Illinois, according to IDHS. This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story. Editor's note: This story has been updated to include the number of mental health patients currently at Choate, which was missing in an earlier version. ANNA — The Illinois Department of Human Services announced Thursday that the Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center in Anna will lay off staff and undergo several operational changes in the coming months, including the elimination of the state-run facility’s entire general residential program for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. According to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — the union that represents the majority of Choate staff — IDHS said it intends to lay off about 250 of the facility’s more than 500 employees over the coming months. In a letter to Choate staff, IDHS said that the changes are a result of the “success” of the state's three-year plan, which aimed to repurpose the facility over three years in partnership with the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. According to the letter, IDHS plans to cease operations for the intellectual and developmental disabilities general units by Sept. 30. The department will also “phase down” 75 civil mental health beds at Choate while adding beds to the Madden Mental Health Center in Chicago. This phase-down, says IDHS, which is planned to be completed by March 2027, is because the “need for mental health beds is greater in northern Illinois.” In its letter, IDHS did not specify how many employees would face layoffs as a result of these reductions, but acknowledged that layoffs will occur. “We will work with our labor partners to support employees,” the IDHS letter states. “This includes working closely with directly impacted staff who may be subject to the contractual layoff process.” Choate currently serves 58 general and forensic I/DD patients and an additional 75 mental health patients while employing roughly 524 people across its campus. Of those employees, 468 are represented by AFSCME Council 31. 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. “Unfortunately, the department chose to forge ahead with a plan which will weaken services for the most vulnerable mentally ill individuals and upend the lives of hundreds of Choate employees and their families,” Lynch said. Choate’s 40-bed forensic developmental disabilities unit will continue operations, as will the other IDHS administrative offices on the Choate campus.  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, Gov. JB 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. In February 2024, a newly installed security camera recorded an employee throwing a resident to the floor and punching him. The incident went unreported for 11 days and was discovered only after an anonymous letter prompted investigators to review the footage. 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 layoff