Content warning: This story contains discussion of assault, medical mistreatment and sexual assault.
Danielle, a nurse at Greenwood Care, was two hours into an October night shift at the Evanston residential mental health facility when staff discovered a patient who appeared injured.
The patient, who was in the hallway getting water, was covered in bruises, the back of his head actively bleeding.
Danielle, who requested to go by a pseudonym due to fear of retaliation from Greenwood Care, said the patient was wearing a brace on his arm, and his nose looked broken. She went to his room, where she found his pillowcase stained with blood.
After talking with the resident and consulting paperwork, Danielle said she discovered that the resident had left the facility earlier in the day and was attacked on the train. He was taken to Saint Francis Hospital, where he was treated, and then transported back to Greenwood Care by emergency medical services around 9:30 p.m.
Danielle was stunned. She said she was unsure whether the previous shift’s staff knew about the patient’s injuries or if they had reported them to anyone.
Patrick Callahan, the attorney for former Greenwood Care Executive Director Venis Neal, said in a statement emailed to The Daily that the resident had experienced “roughly six hours of complete neglect.” Danielle said this neglect occurred on the previous shift, which lasted from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. before she clocked in.
Danielle said she alerted the director of nursing and worked with other nightshift employees to care for the patient. She documented what she saw, performed neural checks on the patient and alerted a doctor of the incident, Danielle said.
Danielle said that within days of the October incident, she received notice from her supervisor that Neal, then-executive director, planned to punish her and staff on the night shift for failing to care for the resident correctly.
Callahan told The Daily that the disciplinary action taken related to the incident was “supported by written documentation of each employee’s specific failures.” Danielle said she received no written documentation related to the incident.
The October incident was one of many troubling incidents that have occurred at Greenwood Care, both under Neal’s leadership and beyond, employees said. At least six current or former Greenwood Care employees alleged that Neal mistreated staff and residents, arbitrarily fired employees and mismanaged the facility. Some had been reporting Neal’s behavior and other issues at the facility to management and the state for years, only for Neal to remain in her post.
“She was like cancer to that building,” Danielle said.
Callahan denied that Neal treated employees with hostility in his statement to The Daily. He wrote that Neal, who has worked in healthcare for about 30 years, had to address major issues at the facility from the time she was hired. Greenwood Care had a “successful program that had only the lowest violations” under Neal’s leadership, Callahan wrote.
Danielle had seen punishments at Greenwood Care range from write-ups to suspensions and firings. Feeling the decision to pursue disciplinary action against her was unfair, Danielle and another employee decided to take action.
Danielle said she reported Neal’s alleged arbitrary punishment to Halima Maynard, the regional nurse consultant at S.I.R. Management, a health care consulting company that has a complex advisory role in Greenwood Care’s operations. Maynard allegedly brought the incident to Patrick Baalke, the chief operating officer at Generations Healthcare Network which S.I.R. contracts with.
Baalke planned to visit the facility on Oct. 14, 2025, Danielle said. Callahan said the visit was unrelated to the incident.
According to Callahan, Neal resigned Oct. 14, 2025, the same day Baalke allegedly visited the facility after the employees’ reports.
Baalke did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and Greenwood Care declined to comment on employment-related matters.
In Danielle’s view, Neal’s resignation was for the best. But she said the problems at Greenwood Care spread beyond Neal.
“It wasn’t just (Neal) that’s a problem. It’s the culture of the building. It’s the culture of the company,” Danielle said.
Greenwood Care’s role in the Evanston and Chicago areas
Greenwood Care is a residential mental health care facility located at 1406 Chicago Ave. in Evanston. According to its website, the 145-bed facility serves residents with various conditions, including schizoaffective disorder, major depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Greenwood Care is currently home to about 116 residents, according to a statement emailed to The Daily.
The facility is one of about 20 Specialized Mental Health Rehabilitation Facilities in Illinois. SMHRFs are licensed by the Illinois Department of Public Health and provide rehabilitation, crisis stabilization and transitional living assistance to prepare residents with mental illnesses to live independently.
“It’s our intention to make sure everyone goes back into the community, if possible,” Neal said in a video posted on Greenwood Care’s Facebook page in 2021.
While the goal is to help residents leave Greenwood Care within about six months or a year, a few residents have lived there for more than 15 years, according to two former employees. Greenwood Care wrote in its statement to The Daily that some residents need to stay at the facility for “many years.”
Neal, a licensed nursing home administrator in Illinois, has been in health care since 1996.
Neal joined Greenwood Care as executive director in December 2020 after the previous executive director resigned, according to a Greenwood Care spokesperson. In this role, she led the facility and worked with department managers to make hiring and firing decisions, the spokesperson said.
Callahan said in an email statement that Neal was hired to “clean up the misconduct” at Greenwood Care, claiming that the facility had serious issues such as inappropriate staff-resident relationships and theft of hours worked.
Callahan wrote that Neal generally “gave leadership the autonomy to hire and fire their own staff and she would not know about disciplinary action until it had already been presented to the staff.” But several employees said Neal was more involved in the disciplinary process.
While Neal was executive director, Greenwood Care was issued a probationary license and struggled to retain employees.
‘An environment of submissiveness’
The Daily spoke to three employees who were fired by Neal in the span of about a year. Several current and former employees said others were also fired or left Greenwood Care due to poor work conditions during Neal’s tenure.
Six current and former employees said Greenwood Care had a high employee turnover rate, in part due to the culture Neal created.
“She just couldn’t keep anybody working there,” said Kennedy Jones, a former Greenwood Care mental health professional. “She would fire you at the drop of a dime.”
Nadine, a former nurse at Greenwood Care who asked to go by a pseudonym due to fear of retaliation, said she was fired by Neal in 2024. Nadine said she had worked at the facility on and off since 2018, and she enjoyed working there before Neal’s arrival.
In July 2024, Nadine recalled, a former resident walked into Greenwood Care claiming that he did not like the new facility where he was living.
Nadine said that because he was no longer Greenwood Care’s patient, she should either call his new facility or the police and allow them to coordinate his care. She noted the former resident could have been missing, so it was important to notify his new facility or the police.
But Neal insisted that Nadine send him to a hospital and then evaluate whether the resident should come back to Greenwood Care. The facility’s resident population was low at the time, Nadine said, and she believed Neal wanted to readmit the resident to Greenwood Care.
Nadine said Neal snapped at her during the disagreement.
“She just told me, ‘Girl, get out of here. I don’t need you,’” she said.
In the moment, Nadine dismissed the comment; she said it wasn’t uncommon for Neal to speak to employees that way. But when Nadine came back for her next shift, Neal fired her, she said.
Other former employees also observed the revolving door of colleagues at the facility. Toni Poole, another former Greenwood Care mental health professional, said that the employee who had been training her on her first day complained about Neal.
“He was like, ‘(Neal) expects so much, but she only gives so little. She don’t know how to talk to people.’ And I didn’t understand that until I actually was working,” Poole said.
On her second day, the employee was not there, Poole said. She then learned he had left the company.
Poole started working at Greenwood Care in May 2024. Within a month, she left the facility, too.
Another employee who started around the same time as Poole once tried to raise questions with Neal over email, Poole said. She said Neal allegedly responded by threatening his job via email.
“She took off, basically telling him that we can be replaced. … Whatever we won’t do, you know, there’s other people that will,” Poole said.
Callahan said in his statement that Neal maintains that staff were replaceable, but that the consumers they served were not.
“No doubt, the staff there that was finally held accountable did not appreciate her efforts,” Callahan wrote. “Many of them left voluntarily, but others were fired due to neglect, theft, or lack of concern for consumers.”
Sarah, a former employee who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, said she worked at Greenwood Care from June to September 2024. She left the facility after Neal demanded Sarah respond to her calls and texts “24/7,” a standard Callahan said Neal applied to all department heads at Greenwood Care.
In daily meetings among leadership, Neal would consistently “attack” employees and accuse them of wrongdoing, Sarah said. She witnessed at least two coworkers cry at the meetings, she said.
“It creates this tone where everyone feels like they have to stay quiet,” Sarah said. “So you’re watching your coworkers being abused and crying during meetings and abandoning themselves, just to (avoid) her attack.”
Callahan wrote in a statement that the meetings were meant to encourage open discussion, but employees — including Neal — frequently became emotional during them. He wrote that Neal denies that she treated her employees dismissively or with hostility.
But Sarah said she felt employees feared Neal’s reprimands, describing Greenwood Care as an “environment of submissiveness.”
Neal allegedly directed ‘abusive language’ toward residents
Former and current employees said Neal’s behavior also impacted residents at the facility.
In December 2024, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation served Neal a notice to appear at a hearing in response to a complaint about her communication with residents.
The complaint alleged that Neal “used Greenwood’s intercom system to direct abusive language toward Greenwood residents and threatened them with expulsion from Greenwood” in September 2024. If proven, the allegation would violate the Nursing Home Administrators Licensing and Disciplinary Act and could result in disciplinary action against Neal’s license.
Neal and her lawyer denied the allegations in a signed letter to IDFPR obtained by The Daily. According to an IDFPR document, Neal’s hearing was scheduled for April 21, 2025. Neal’s license is currently active and has never been disciplined, according to IDFPR’s license search.
In an email to The Daily, IDFPR declined to comment on open investigations. An IDFPR spokesperson said in an email that licenses usually can’t be disciplined until the enforcement process is complete, and investigations undertaken by IDFPR are “confidential unless they result in public disciplinary action.”
In an audio recording obtained by The Daily, Neal used Greenwood Care’s intercom system to reprimand residents in September 2024.
“If you don’t want to follow my rules, you will leave, you will get out of my facility ASAP,” Neal yelled over the intercom to residents in the recording.
Callahan did not respond to questions regarding the recording or the IDFPR investigation.
Sarah said Neal’s communication with residents drew concern from residents’ families and guardians. Residents’ family members frequently called the facility after residents told them about Neal’s behavior, Sarah said.
In text messages obtained by The Daily, Neal called a resident’s family “trashy” after they expressed concerns about the resident’s treatment in 2024.
“Some families that were not used to having their loved ones be expected to participate in their own care were contentious at times,” Callahan wrote in a statement in response to allegations that Neal’s behavior drew concern from residents’ families.
Sarah said she felt that many residents’ symptoms worsened as a result of Neal’s mistreatment.
“They’re deteriorating because they don’t have any structure. They don’t have any support,” Sarah said. “They’re not being cared for in a way that’s nurturing and meaningful.”
Residents and their families faced challenges during Neal’s tenure
Grace, who asked to go by a pseudonym due to fear of retaliation from Greenwood Care and its consultants, is the mother and legal guardian of a former Greenwood Care resident. Her son was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his young adulthood, and Greenwood Care offered the care he needed. He moved into the facility in 2017, she said.
Grace said that as her son’s representative payee, she received his bills from Greenwood Care and Social Security. She discovered that Greenwood Care had allowed her son to sign a financial contract for dental services, charging him more than $2,000 a year.
A Greenwood Care spokesperson wrote in a statement that if a resident has a legal guardian, the staff is required to notify them of “certain actions taken” regarding the resident.
“All of the paperwork identifies me as his mother and his legal guardian,” Grace said. “How does he sign a contract for dental services?”
Grace said she argued with Neal over the phone about the dental plan. She said Neal once called Grace in February 2025 and threatened to give her son an emergency discharge from Greenwood Care, she said.
Callahan said Neal had “absolutely nothing to do with financials or dental plans.” He said Neal denies ever being hostile toward the residents’ families.
Grace said her son was issued an emergency discharge and sent to Saint Francis Hospital for drug use in July 2025. Her son told Grace that he obtained the drugs from other Greenwood Care residents.
Hospital staff told her that while there was a low level of drugs in his system, her son had no medical or behavioral reason to be in the hospital. Grace said her son stayed in the hospital for a week as she searched for a new home for him.
It wasn’t the first time Greenwood Care sent her son to the hospital, Grace said. In 2024, her son was sent to St. Bernard Hospital in Englewood. She said she was told he had a behavioral issue related to taking medication in the morning, but she didn’t know he was being sent to the hospital — let alone a hospital far from Evanston — until he was in an ambulance around 8 p.m.
Hospital staff at St. Bernard told her they saw no medical or behavioral reason for her son to be in the hospital, Grace said.
“Sitting a disabled individual on a long ambulance ride to a hospital where they really don’t need to be there — that’s abuse,” Grace said.
Callahan said the facility’s physician had oversight over sending Grace’s son to the hospital.
“Neal and her staff simply followed the clinical team’s orders on where to send a consumer,” Callahan said. “I have no doubt that this was frustrating for the guardian, but Ms. Neal was not the person responsible for it and would have only informed the guardian about what the clinical team ordered.”
Grace said she moved her son to a new facility in the area in the summer of 2025.
She said she reported Neal and the issues with the dental payments to IDPH. She attended hearings with IDPH and representation from Greenwood Care, she said. Grace said she was told the case was dismissed because her son is no longer a Greenwood Care resident.
IDPH issues Greenwood Care a probationary license
In March, a female resident at Greenwood Care was sexually assaulted by a male resident at the facility, according to documents from an IDPH investigation.
IDPH surveyed the facility in April after receiving a complaint about the incident. Callahan said the facility itself reported the incident to IDPH. According to the IDPH documents, the male resident had entered the female resident’s room twice before the incident, forcing her to kiss him.
On the third instance of forced entry, the male resident “approached her from the side of the bed where she lay and choked her as he forced his penis into her mouth,” the documents stated. The female resident “became tearful as she described the events with trembling hands” to the IDPH surveyor, according to the investigation.
In the documents, Neal said staff struggles to communicate with the female resident. When investigators tried to interview the resident, she said she does not speak English, according to the documents. The female resident alerted Greenwood Care staff of the incident, but asked them not to take her to the hospital or call the police, the documents stated.
Neal told the investigator that the patient who committed the assault “is an identified offender but not for sex crimes,” the documents said. The facility ultimately discharged the male resident.
IDPH protocol requires SMHRFs to report all alleged incidents of sexual assault to law enforcement, preserve as much evidence of the assault as possible and ensure the affected resident receives all possible and necessary medical treatment. Greenwood Care did not report the incident to police or take the female resident to the hospital for medical treatment, according to the documents.
IDPH’s investigation concluded that Greenwood Care’s management and staff failed to “conduct a formal reassessment in a treatment plan after a traumatic incident for a resident, report a potentially criminal incident to law enforcement authorities, prevent sexual abuse to a consumer, (and) document timely care for a sexual assault survivor.”
As a result, IDPH determined that Greenwood Care had committed a Level 4 Violation, meaning the facility’s compliance with the rules of the Specialized Mental Health Rehabilitation Act of 2013 was “minimally acceptable and (necessitated) immediate corrective action.”
In July, IDPH notified Greenwood Care that it would be placed on a probationary license, requiring the facility to make corrective changes and temporarily prohibiting admission of new residents. IDPH documents show that last year, Greenwood Care submitted a plan of correction on Aug. 12, the probationary license went into effect on Aug. 15 and IDPH deemed the facility in compliance with the plan on Aug. 28. Greenwood Care was released from probation Aug. 29.
With the violation, Greenwood Care also incurred a $12,500 fee. However, the fee is currently stayed by the court because the facility challenged the violation in a joint lawsuit with Albany Care, another Evanston mental health care facility, in August.
In comments submitted to IDPH by Greenwood Care regarding its probationary license, the facility stated that it “disagrees” with the state’s assessment of its response to the alleged sexual assault. In the comments, Greenwood Care argued that it conducted a proper screening after the incident and that “the consumer refused all the care offered after the alleged incident.”
The facility also challenged the notion that the assault was preventable.
“Sometimes, even when the facility does everything perfectly, abuse still occurs,” the comments read.
In Callahan’s statement, he claimed that “all of the appropriate assessments were charted properly” but were not all reviewed by the surveyor.
In a statement to The Daily, Greenwood Care wrote that the facility is “entitled to due process before punishment is meted out by the state and in this instance, those rights were violated.”
IDPH declined to comment on the investigation or the lawsuit challenging the violation.
Greenwood Care’s complex relationship with S.I.R. Management and Generations Healthcare Network
S.I.R. Management is a consulting company that advises five rehabilitation and nursing facilities in Illinois, including Greenwood Care and Albany Care, another SMHRF that has also faced license restrictions from IDPH in recent years. S.I.R. contracts with Generations Healthcare Network, a consulting firm and nursing and rehabilitation services provider, according to a Greenwood Care spokesperson.
Greenwood Care’s statement said that S.I.R. advises Greenwood Care, but all decisions are made by Greenwood Care independently. It also said that Generations is “completely unaffiliated” with Greenwood Care.
However, according to the Illinois Secretary of State Business Entity Search, Generations, S.I.R. and Greenwood Care LLC all share the same principal address in Lincolnwood, Illinois.
The site also lists the same agent, Thomas Winter, for both Generations and Greenwood Care. Winter is also the chief financial officer and treasurer of Generations.
The site lists Bryan Barrish and Michael Giannini as officers for S.I.R. The two men are also principals and managing members of Generations, and Barrish and his wife have 31% ownership of Greenwood Care.
S.I.R. and Generations also appear to be involved in addressing employee concerns. Danielle first brought her grievance to Maynard — an employee at S.I.R. — and then was referred to Baalke, the COO at Generations. Other Greenwood Care employees also said they discussed concerns with employees at S.I.R. and Generations.
When The Daily attempted to send questions to Baalke at Generations, a Greenwood Care spokesperson responded to the request.
When Grace was searching for a new mental health care facility for her son, she said she did extensive research to ensure she didn’t choose a facility with ties to S.I.R. and Generations.
“I (had) to get outside of this group because I didn’t want there to be negative repercussions for me and my son,” Grace said.
Staff and residents reported issues for years
Several current or former employees allege that Greenwood Care, S.I.R. and Generations knew about Neal’s behavior and allowed her to maintain her role as executive director. Employees said they reported Neal themselves and knew other employees, residents and residents’ families who reported issues at the facility.
In a letter obtained by The Daily, a former employee reported issues at the facility — including Neal’s alleged arbitrary firings and her alleged poor treatment of staff and residents — to Barrish and Baalke in 2023.
“Many people tried to contact (Baalke) and either got nothing, or if they did get a meeting, it didn’t go anywhere,” Nadine said. “He would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll look into it.’ Nothing changed.”
Grace said she also reported Neal’s behavior and the high employee turnover rate at Greenwood Care to Baalke, first in 2023, after the dental plan incident. She later contacted Baalke again in 2024, she said.
Several current or former employees said some residents and their families spoke with Candice Mitchell — Evanston’s long-term care ombudsman, who advocates for residents’ rights — about conditions at Greenwood Care, including Grace.
According to Evanston 311 records, Mitchell texted the city on behalf of Greenwood Care residents in May 2025 to request a food inspection, citing reports of allergen cross-contamination and cockroaches.
Sarah said Neal discouraged her from talking to the ombudsman. Neal criticized Mitchell and said employees should take their issues directly to Neal, Sarah said.
Callahan said in a statement that IDPH visited Greenwood Care often due to complaints made by the ombudsman. He said there were more than 50 complaints that were reviewed and dismissed. Callahan also said the ombudsman filed complaints against Neal with the Office of Inspector General and IDFPR.
Employees and residents sometimes looked to the state to help resolve the issues at the facility they said were caused by Neal, such as the complaint that resulted in the ongoing IDFPR investigation regarding Neal’s language over the intercom and Grace’s complaint to IDPH.
A spokesperson for the City of Evanston declined to answer a list of questions about the ombudsman’s interactions with Greenwood Care, instead directing The Daily to Kelly Richards, the state long-term care ombudsman. Richards did not respond to questions specifically about Greenwood Care due to confidentiality restrictions.
Challenges persist after Neal’s resignation
After Neal’s departure, Baalke helped run the facility temporarily, according to Danielle and a Greenwood Care spokesperson. Greenwood Care then appointed Priscilla Huley, a licensed clinical professional counselor who previously worked at Pathways to Healing Therapeutic Services, to be the facility’s new executive director. She started her new position Nov. 17, 2025.
Callahan said Neal is “highly supportive” of Huley’s hiring.
While Danielle acknowledged conditions at Greenwood Care have improved since Neal’s resignation, issues remain at the facility. Danielle said that there are employees at Greenwood Care in roles they have not been trained for, which results in confusion and increased incidents with residents.
Danielle and Nadine said many residents at Greenwood Care have issues with substance abuse in addition to the conditions that qualify them for care at the facility. They said they think the facility needs more support for residents suffering from addiction.
On Jan. 2, a resident was transported to the hospital after the resident ingested an unknown powdered substance, according to a Greenwood Care spokesperson. Evanston Fire Department personnel discovered the substance and called in a hazmat team to investigate the situation.
Danielle also criticized Greenwood Care and S.I.R. for the years Neal remained in her role at Greenwood Care. She said her expectations of “competent staff and quality care” were not met.
“She did whatever she wanted, and she had the company backing her,” Danielle said.
Like Danielle, Sarah said she thinks the issues at Greenwood Care go beyond Neal. Other members of the facility’s management let Neal “bully” staff and residents at Greenwood Care for far too long and were complicit in the wrongdoing, she said.
Sarah also noted that the revolving door of employees should have raised red flags with Greenwood Care, S.I.R. and Generations. She said it was “negligent to not look at what’s happening internally.”
Poole echoed Sarah and Danielle’s sentiments. She said Greenwood Care needs to hire caring people for leadership roles.
“(The residents) are in critical times in their life. They may be homeless. They may have a drug addiction. Whatever the case may be, it’s the reason that they’re there,” Poole said. “They’re still human and they ought to be treated as such.”
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