CHICAGO — By the time Illinois notified group home provider Broadstep two years ago that it was revoking its license, the list of problems documented by state investigators spanned nearly seven pages.
Expired medications. Incomplete background checks. “Critical incidents,” which may have included medical emergencies and other events that spurred 911 calls, not reported properly. And some employees without proof of high school diplomas, GEDs or required literacy tests.
The list went on.
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Broadstep was one of the larger group home providers in Illinois for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, according to a 2024 state audit, though a small number of providers had many more sites. And its collapse became a flashpoint in a broader debate over its onetime owner — a private equity firm — and the growing role such owners have in an industry the audit said in 2023 served more than 3,100 licensed sites and about 11,000 people with developmental disabilities statewide.
Earlier this year, that debate produced legislation now on Gov. JB Pritzker’s desk requiring greater transparency from investment firms that buy group homes for people with disabilities.
The legislation
The bill, which passed the General Assembly this spring with broad bipartisan support, requires facilities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to report to the state when they are purchased by an asset management company — such as a private equity fund, hedge fund or venture capital firm.
After a community integrated living arrangement — commonly known as a group home or CILA — or other licensed facility for people with disabilities is purchased by such a firm, it would have to regularly report financial activity, including assets, liabilities and staffing levels, to the state Health Facilities and Services Review Board.
They would also have to notify the state before selling off parts of the business and certify that the sale would not leave the facility financially distressed, a provision the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 has branded a first-in-the-nation “anti-looting” measure.
Entities that fail to report would face fines, and the board would notify the state agency that issues the facility’s license.
Democratic state Sen. Javier Cervantes, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the goal is oversight, not exclusion.
“So I think these are more of — ways to create guardrails. I think one facility dealing with this for me is enough, right? I think that’s one too many,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with them coming in here and investing, but as long as they’re — they don’t do any looting, they don’t do things that will run down the facility.”
Democratic state Rep. Laura Faver Dias of Grayslake, another sponsor, said the union’s testimony about conditions at Broadstep-owned homes shaped the bill’s priorities.
“Yes, there are business entities operating in this space, but … my top priority is the human care,” she said. “We know that private equity has a vested interest in profit, and the state of Illinois — I think it’s pretty broad consensus that we have, our motive in this space, is making sure that our most vulnerable residents are taken care of in a way that they deserve.”
The bill also addresses a gap regulators didn’t anticipate, said Jacob Meeks, AFSCME Council 31’s policy director.
“When the state’s regulations were developed, they didn’t contemplate asset management companies and private equity firms having an interest in disability services,” Meeks said.
The Broadstep case and Bain
Broadstep, which operated homes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Freeport, Springfield, Marengo, Naperville and elsewhere, drew scrutiny after Bain Capital became involved in the company around 2020, according to AFSCME Council 31 and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a watchdog research nonprofit critical of the industry.
At its peak under Bain’s investment, Broadstep housed 150 to 200 people across homes with a maximum capacity of eight residents each, according to AFSCME estimates. The homes previously operated under the names Willowglen and Bethesda, according to a 2023 state Department of Healthcare and Family Services report.
An August 2024 report from the state Office of the Auditor General found Broadstep “appears to have violated both State law and State rule” during investigations from July 2020 to June 2023.
During that period, the company received $23.6 million for services — the highest funding total among the 25 providers included in the report. The Illinois Department of Human Services failed to sanction Broadstep even as the company “repeatedly refused to cooperate” with investigations into allegations against it, the report said.
IDHS spokesperson Summer Griffith said the department is acting on the auditor’s recommendations.
“In partnership with the IDHS Inspector General (OIG), IDHS has strengthened tracking, coordination, and follow-up when providers fail to cooperate with investigations, and has clarified the policy for addressing provider noncompliance,” Griffith said.
Illinois notified Broadstep it was revoking its license in 2024 after the company failed to correct the violations despite repeated warnings, according to the revocation notice obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, following its publication by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.
“Despite multiple plans of correction and corrective action plans and personalized assistance from (the Division of Developmental Disabilities), the deficiencies continue. Every effort has been made to with Broadstep (sic) to not only address these deficiencies but to implement a system to maintain compliance,” the letter said.
Questions about who owns Broadstep remain unresolved even now, in the absence of mandatory reporting.
Neither Broadstep nor its attorney, Matthew Hughes, responded to inquiries about the new legislation or the license revocation.
Bain spokesperson Eddie de Sciora said in an email that Bain had not been “the majority owner of Broadstep since October 2023, so the firm was not involved operationally when the license was revoked for the IL facility in 2024.” De Sciora did not respond to follow-up questions about who controlled Broadstep after 2023, and declined to comment on the violations dated before that time.
Bain listed Broadstep as an “active” investment on its website into 2025, according to a screenshot in the web archive, though de Sciora said the website listing reflected that Bain Capital Double Impact, one of its investing arms, “retained a small residual equity position” after October 2023.
“(T)he 2024 Illinois revocation occurred after that operational control had ended,” he said in an email.
Griffith didn’t respond to questions about the specifics of Broadstep losing its license or the new legislation.
The industry responds
The scale of private equity ownership among Illinois group home providers remains largely unknown — a gap the new law is designed to close.
About half a dozen intellectual and developmental disability service providers associated with private equity firms have locations in Illinois, according to a 2025 report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project.
Cervantes said it appears Bain is out of the picture in Illinois and that asset management firms don’t currently operate at large scale in the state’s disability care system.
Private Equity Stakeholder Project spokesperson Matt Parr said the state’s experience still carries national weight.
“Illinois was a very unfortunate case study in what was happening with these private equity-owned (intellectual and developmental disability) providers,” he said.
Community-based provider group Illinois Association of Rehabilitation Facilities President and CEO Josh Evans, whose organization neither supported nor opposed the new bill during this year’s legislative session, questioned the extent of private equity involvement among the hundreds of licensed providers in Illinois. The organizations Evans works with are “by and large” nonprofit, he said, and he could not say how many providers were owned by private equity in Illinois overall.
Overall, those in the intellectual and developmental disabilities space “run a tight ship,” Evans said, as they’re subject to audits, quality measures and reports to state government. His organization is more focused on wages and other issues than private equity, he said.
If the department gets to the point of revoking a license, he said, “there are serious issues with that organization.”
One worker’s story
Rori Schrader, 54, began working at the Freeport-area homes — then known as Willowglen — in 2013, handling medication administration, bathing, feeding and other daily care. After Bain’s investment around 2020, staffing was cut, she said, and turnover accelerated as patient-to-staff ratios grew unmanageable.
“You could just tell that once we were bought by this company, that there wasn’t as much care for the individuals or the staff,” said Schrader, a former direct support professional, administrative assistant and AFSCME Council 31 member at the facility, which closed last year.
Schrader said she saw maintenance issues go unaddressed starting around 2021, including holes in walls left by a patient around 2023, and she said administrative positions were cut while management became difficult to reach.
After the facility closed, she said she worried about how longer-term residents would adjust to new placements.
Stacey Aschemann, vice president at Equip for Equality, which advocates on behalf of people with disabilities, said the new law provides a step toward transparency.
“Service models that focus on maximizing profits must not be part of Illinois’ support system for people with developmental disabilities,” Aschemann said in an email.
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