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Officials: Elgin group home for women closing May 8

Editor's note: this story was updated to say the National Alliance on Mental Illness helps run the drop-in center.

Despite efforts to save it, a group home for mentally ill women in Elgin will close May 8 as a result of the state's budget crisis, officials said.

Ecker Center for Mental Health plans to sell the group home on the city's northwest side, which costs about $10,000 monthly to run, Executive Director Karen Beyer said. A fundraising effort earlier this year netted $30,000, which is keeping the home open through May.

Five of the seven residents will move to a local nursing home. Arrangements are pending for the other two residents.

"It's been a very difficult thing for everybody involved," Beyer said. "We tried to do the very best we could for the seven ladies."

The agency provides a variety of outpatient mental health services to adults and children; it also runs another group home - whose federal funding had been coming in - plus six residential apartment programs.

The sale of the women's home, along with a pending $175,000 loan from the city of Elgin, should keep Ecker Center's other operations in business through November, Beyer said. The Elgin City Council is expected to give the final OK to the loan application tonight.

"We are hoping that after the November elections, that money (from the state) will become available," Beyer said.

Ecker Center's annual operations total about $5 million. Beyer declined to say how much she expects the home to sell for, but she said it will fund 1½ pay periods for the agency's 100 or so employees, including part-timers.

The agency will not use the city's loan to fund the group home because it is focusing on avoiding large-scale service cuts, Beyer said. "We're not getting paid by the state and we have to do things to survive."

In the first nine months of the fiscal year, Ecker Center provided nearly $765,700 in services without a state payment, Beyer said.

Ecker has cut staff members' benefits, eliminated 17 positions and all but closed its drop-in program, which now is run once a week by the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, she said. The agency also ramped up fundraising, Beyer said, adding she and her assistant work more than 60 hours a week.

"All of us have sacrificed in keeping the agency open, functioning and serving as many people as we can, without eliminating services."

Three of the seven staff members who work at the group home are getting other positions within the agency and one is retiring; the others are pursuing other options, Beyer said.

Staff members had expressed concerns about placing the group home's residents in nursing homes, which are typically more restrictive settings. While that is true, Beyer said, it was also a victory to keep five of the seven women together, she said. The sixth resident might join her sibling in a different nursing home, while the seventh might move to a facility with a lower level of supervision, she said.

"It's been a sad thing for everybody, but we've talked and talked and worked and worked to find good placements for these ladies."

Elgin's Ecker Center seeking help to keep group home open for eight women

Thanks to donations, Ecker Center women's home staying open in Elgin

Elgin's 2nd nonprofit loan goes to Ecker Center

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