Mission and Values

The Institutional Rescue and Recovery Coalition is a group of organizations and individuals responding to the unprecedented impact of the Coronavirus on people in Illinois institutions. To this end, we call for immediate, expanded action by state, local and federal governments, in consultation with stakeholders, to meet the increasingly dire public health crisis threatening institutional residents and staff.

Just about half of all COVID-19 deaths in Illinois have been among the small fraction of the population that live and work in institutions. This is no coincidence. We hold that institutional settings, regardless of facility safeguards, create heightened risks of infection and infection-related deaths for residents and workers over those in non-congregate settings. While we advocate for restored or stronger oversight, greater transparency and regulatory controls, as well as protective measures within institutions, we assert that the most humane and effective response to this pandemic is organized emergency relocations.

We assert that ableist and racist policies laid the groundwork for the humanitarian crisis we find Illinois institutions in today and that continuing the forced containment of Illinoisans in congregate settings perpetuates discriminatory attitudes and practices at the cost of thousands of lives. The state’s segregationist strategies that allow for only shelter-in-place and ad hoc hospitalizations for institutionalized Illinoisans during the pandemic exacerbate separate and unequal policies based on ill-informed prejudices and in spite of a wealth of evidence showing non-congregate settings to be safer alternatives. We assert that:

1. The high infection rates in institutions such as nursing homes are reflective of congregate setting failures and not an inevitable outcome due to the medical profiles of their residents.
2. The absence of emergency relocation strategies is not due to logistical or practical barriers but arises from a lack of political will to support and safeguard this population.
3. Decreasing or eliminating both the oversight capabilities and liability of institutions has further endangered their residents and staff.
4. People in congregate settings must be given protections and protocols that are commensurate with the broader population, including equitable supports and options for physical distancing to ensure their well-being.
5. While additional protective measures against the Coronavirus within institutions mitigate setting risks and must be increased, they have proven incapable of overcoming the inherent failures of those settings or of reducing rates of infection and deaths to levels found in the general population; therefore:
6. Organized emergency relocations must be a core component of our state’s pandemic response strategies for people in institutions and other

To these points, our demands are:

1. Immediately establish protocol and implement emergency relocation programs for institutionalized Illinoisans. Our goal of no more than one person per facility living unit would help establish physical distancing called for by the CDC.
2. Rescind Executive Order 2020-19 that grants healthcare facilities immunity from civil liability during the COVID-19 crisis.
3. Immediately allow long-term care ombudsmen and transition coordinators access to long-term care facilities.
4. Deliver sufficient protective gear to all institutional residents and staff that ensures compliance with CDC guidelines, and publicly post weekly updates on the types and amounts of supplies provided to each institution.
5. Immediately develop protocol to accelerate the implementation of the Colbert, Williams, and Ligas Consent Decrees.
6. Expedite home and community-based eligibility determinations for those who want to remain in the community or who refuse to return to unsafe congregate settings.