Elgin Easter Seals programs showing growth

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Four-year-old Richie Lopez reacts to bubbles floating through the air during his session of therapy for his autism, Thursday at the Easter Seals Jayne Shover Center in Elgin. The Easter Seal Center now that it has cut back its spending, rented out much of building and merged into the Easter Seals Dupage and the Fox Valley Region. February 9, 2012 | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

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Updated: March 13, 2012 10:28AM

ELGIN — Seven years ago, the Elgin area’s Easter Seals operation was in perilous shape.

A perhaps over-ambitious expansion of its Jayne Shover Center building at 799 S. McLean Blvd., a shortfall in fundraising, and changes in how some other sources of its income directed their giving had saddled the group with a big debt.

The organization that works with disabled children had to sell its big building, rent back just a small part of it and merge with the financially stronger Easter Seals chapter in DuPage County. The group even gave up its high-profile annual cable-TV telethon.

“A lot of people don’t even realize we are still here,” concedes Theresa Forthofer, who became president and CEO of what is now called Easter Seals DuPage and the Fox Valley Region”about a year ago.

But the organization has stabilized and, in fact, its programs in Elgin once again are growing. It recently moved into a different section of the same building and will hold an open house to show off its new quarters from 4 to 7 p.m. March 8.

The open house will include a ribbon cutting plus guided tours, refreshments, a“Kid Zone”activity center and free adult hearing screenings.

Autism and more

Working now at three locations — in Elgin, Villa Park and Naperville — Easter Seals DuPage and the Fox Valley Region delivers various kinds of therapy to children and teens with many kinds of disabilities.

“Kids come to us with everything from a mild speech impairment that can be fixed in a few months to severe cognitive impairments”caused by conditions such as autism and cerebral palsy,” Forthofer said.

The 130 employees, including 65 trained therapists, work with 3,200 clients a year, and “some of our therapists have been with us for 30 years,””she said.

On Thursday afternoon, occupational therapist Laura Spanel was working one-on-one with 4-year-old Richie Lopez as his parents, Shawna Hoke and Robert Lopez of South Elgin, looked on. As Spanel played with the toddler on a giant medicine ball and worked with him to build a Valentine-themed butterfly out of construction paper, his parents recalled how they discovered Richie was autistic.

“Richie has a twin brother, and he had always been very loud and outgoing. But Richie was never forward with other people,” Hoke said. “He would shut down and not talk and not acknowledge anybody else.””

“We thought at first that he was just a late bloomer, or maybe he had hearing problems,””Lopez said. “But we finally found out he was autistic.””

Richie’s family has been working with Spanel for three years, first in visits to their home and now in weekly sessions at the Jayne Shover Center. And the therapy has made a big difference in Richie’s behavior, they say.

As they talked, Richie was energetically enjoying his activities with the therapist. When she blew bubbles toward him, he was so thrilled that he erupted with an ear-piercing scream.

“More and more autistic children are coming for help, not just in the Fox Valley but all over the country,” Forthofer said.

“One of every 110 children born now have some kind of autism, and nobody knows why. Growing awareness of the problem certainly accounts for some of the increased numbers. But who knows what’s doing this?””

CEO also a client

Forthofer herself knows well the challenges faced by families such as Richie’s.

“I have three children, and two of them have autism and muscular dystrophy,” she said. “Long before I worked here, I was a client of the Easter Seals chapter down in Joliet.”

Forthofer grew up in Elgin, so taking the CEO job feels like a homecoming for her. Before being hired by Easter Seals DuPage and Fox Valley Region a year ago, she worked for the Wheaton Park District and then for 15 years was executive director of a social service agency called The Community House in Hinsdale.

One of those 30-plus-year staffers is Mary Alice D’Arcy, who worked at Easter Seals for 15 years as a social worker, then another 15 years as its CEO. She returned to the staff this year to help restart the social work program, which now will include bilingual counseling. The social work will be funded partly by the EFS Foundation, a charitable offshoot of what used to be the Elgin Federal Savings bank.

D’Arcy said that what became the Elgin Easter Seals organization began in 1955 and at first was called the Easter Seals Center of Northern Kane County. Until 1967, it occupied a former ma-and-pa grocery store at 601 Hill Ave. in Elgin. In 1970, the first part of the Jayne Shover Center was built along McLean Boulevard. That was expanded in 1999 to create a 41,000-square-foot facility — but also a lot of debt.

When the financial crisis developed, in 2005 the group sold the building to Heidner Properties, a real estate group. It then merged with the DuPage County Easter Seals organization and moved the Elgin operations into just 5,000 square feet of the building. Heidner rented out the new wing at the rear to Summit School and much of the rest to Provena Health, which began using it as a base for its hospice and home-care programs.

Then, last year, Summit School moved out of the rear wing of the building, opening up the possibility of the Easter Seals operation expanding again physically. Forthofer said Shales-McNutt Construction remodeled the former school space to create a facility that is 50 percent bigger than Easter Seals had been using.

It also has a more open design with wider halls, larger therapy rooms, plenty of warm, natural light.

Jayne who?

No longer is the local organization called the Easter Seals Jayne Shover Center, but the Elgin facility itself still will be called “the Jayne Shover Center of Easter Seals DuPage and the Fox Valley Region. D’Arcy said Jayne Shover was a CEO of the nationwide Easter Seals organization who lived in Wayne, right in the Elgin organization’s back yard.

Forthofer said each local chapter of Easter Seals is an independent, nonprofit corporation responsible for its own finances. She said the current $10 million annual DuPage-Fox Valley budget comes from “a broad mix of sources, including donations, Medicaid and insurance payments, private payments, grants, the United Way of Elgin, the EFS Foundation and the 708 Board of Kane County.

“Having that broad range of funding makes us more stable and able to absorb a problem in any one, such as the way the state of Illinois is running months behind on its Medicaid payments,” Forthofer said.

One thing that probably won’t be returning is the annual fundraising telethon, which was broadcast on cable TV from Elgin Community College for 25 years.

“It was very popular with the community,””D’Arcy recalled. “We had local singing groups and magicians and community leaders. We continued to do that for three years after the (merger with DuPage County) in 2005. But the cost of doing it grew beyond our ability to sustain it. We needed to have one full-time person working on that all year.””

One thing that will be added before the March 8 open house, she said, is a better sign out front, alongside the Provena Home Services one — to remind all those driving past that the Elgin area’s Easter Seals operation is still going strong.