Trib Details Horrific Conditions at Alden Village North

According to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, reports and citations at a childrens' nursing home on Chicago's North Side, Alden Village North, have continued to mount over the last 10 years accusing the facility, which cares for infants and young adults with severe physical and mental disabilities, of neglect.

While Alden has been slapped with fines in excess of $100,000, the facility has failed to pay back even a fraction of them. The fines seem almost insulting when you consider the deaths of 13 children and young adults over the last 10 years, resulting in a total disregard and lack of justice for these disabled children.

The Trib reports one Chicago Public Schools teacher telling of a young boy who showed up at school in an ill-fitted spring jacket that was paper thin in sub-zero temperatures. The teachers who care for these babies, toddlers and young people after they are dropped off during the week have come out about the alleged abuse from the facility only to have state agencies ignore the reprehensible treatment, such as tales of kids coming to school in diapers so soiled, they left severe and serious rashes. One teacher, suspicious that the childrens' diapers were rarely changed at Alden, even went so far as marking a black “X” on one boy’s diaper only to find the same diaper still on him the next day when he was dropped off for school. Often, teachers have to bathe the children at school because of overwhelming odors.

Children as young as 2 have died in their care when monitor alarms have failed to go off or went undetected. Many of the alarms, under official investigation, were found to be inaudible. Sick children’s symptoms have reportedly gone vastly ignored, when a simple call to a physician could have saved the lives of 4- and 5-year-olds. The residents hardly ever get to go outside and breathing tubes which get pulled out by young children go largely unnoticed until a subsequent death occurs. Laws surrounding the legalities of such conditions at Alden in order to keep them honest and accountable rely largely on the facility itself reporting such incidences, which they allegedly rarely ever do. Tips and reports can come from parents and concerned citizens, but don’t always get the follow up they deserve.

While some of the parents keep in close contact with their children at this nursing home, many of the parents are incarcerated or estranged, leaving these children and young adults without advocates. They have become the forgotten, living in horrendous conditions.