1. Provide the title of your story or series and the names of the journalists involved.
Deadly Neglect by reporters Sam Roe and Jared S. Hopkins. Edited by George Papajohn, assistant managing editor/investigations, and Kaarin Tisue, deputy investigations editor.
2. List date(s) this work was published or aired.
Oct. 8 and 10, 2010, with follow-up articles from Oct. 13 to present. At chicagotribune.com/neglect, the Tribune presented a richly reported package, providing videos, annotated documents and profiles of the 13 children and young adults who died at Alden.
3. Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
A Tribune investigation into a Chicago care center for disabled children revealed 13 deaths due to neglect or unexplained circumstances. Illnesses were ignored, life-support alarms went unanswered and kids with complex medical issues were left unattended. Instead of cracking down, lawmakers and regulators allowed problems to worsen. Rules were weakened, deaths not fully investigated and fines dropped or reduced. One child became a focus of the Tribune's reporting: Jeremiah Clark, a 9-year-old boy whose death followed two days of neglect.
4. Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
Reporter Sam Roe filed several Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain all 113 state health inspection reports on Alden Village North since 2000. When he saw that some deaths might have been prevented had the facility taken basic medical steps, Roe filed 40 more FOIA requests for documents with the state. These included follow-up inspection reports; correspondence between Alden and regulators; financial disclosure records; documents filed in appeal hearings; and all underlying documents in key state investigations: medical records, witness statements and inspectors' hand-written notes. The reporters also reviewed all lawsuits against the facility. In most cases, the names of the children who died were a mystery. State records did not disclose their identities, and death certificates are confidential in Illinois. Working with a government source, the reporters eventually were able to identify victims by cross-checking death certificates with the dates of deaths listed in inspection reports. To analyze Alden's finances, reporters accessed state medical cost reports filed by nursing home operators with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, www.hfs.illinois.gov/costreports. Reporters also accessed data at the Illinois State Board of Elections website, www.elections.il.gov. The reporters created spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel to analyze 10 years of campaign contributions made by the owner of Alden Village North and by the facilities in his company.
5. Explain types of human sources used.
To track down family members of children who died, the reporters made hundreds of phones calls and knocked on doors across northern Illinois. To gain the trust of one family, Hopkins visited several times a week for a month. Some parents said they did not know that regulators had cited Alden in the deaths until informed by the Tribune. Piecing together the final hours of Jeremiah Clark involved interviewing key witnesses reluctant to talk, including doctors, nurses and teachers. Reporters also spent weeks meeting with the Clark family attorney before the lawyer would allow them to interview Jeremiah's mother and obtain family photos. Roe and Hopkins also tracked down former workers, residents and administrators of Alden Village North. Also interviewed were attorneys, advocates, experts, social workers, day-training employees, and school teachers, nurses and principals.
6. Results (if any).
In response to the series, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and three state agencies took swift action to safeguard the facility's children. The actions include: Intensive oversight. Governor Quinn placed a monitoring team at the facility indefinitely, and attorneys and nurses with federally backed watchdog Equip for Equality started investigating numerous deaths that the facility had deemed "natural." Broad reform measures. At the governor's order, state agencies began drafting legislation to improve care at all 300 Illinois facilities for people with developmental disabilities — the first significant move in years to reform care for that population. The effort faces little opposition, and a bill is expected to be introduced and passed this spring. Immediate safeguards. State child welfare authorities took the rare step of removing state wards from Alden Village North, and the facility fired its top administrator, hired more staff and retrained employees.
7. Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
No corrections, clarifications or challenges.
8. Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
If you are interested in a particular government investigative or inspection report, you might want to request all of the underlying documents that were used to compile the finished report. An "official" final report may only be a couple of pages long, but the underlying records might be as thick as a phone book. These records might come to you heavily redacted, but the document will likely disclose who was interviewed and what they said as well as other useful information, such as phone numbers and addresses. Also, look for a compelling narrative. We were struck by what happened to Jeremiah Clark, a 9-year-old boy who died after two days of neglect. But when we read the inspection report related to his death, his name wasn't disclosed, and there hadn't yet been a lawsuit filed in the case. We FOIA'd the underlying documents in the state inquiry, then spent weeks locating his family and former teachers and nurses. In the end, we think his story provided a compelling entry point into the topic.