In an ambitious effort to repair Illinois’ beleaguered child welfare system, state officials have laid out a wide-ranging reform plan that includes extensive worker retraining, expanded access to mental health services and a substantial reduction in the number of juvenile wards in residential treatment centers.
The plan by the state Department of Children and Family Services comes at the behest of a federal judge and a court-appointed panel of experts who concluded that an urgent, sweeping transformation of the embattled agency is necessary — an effort the state’s lingering budget stalemate could undermine, even with a court order protecting the agency’s funding.
“DCFS is committed to taking immediate action to correct systemic deficiencies and to strive for the safety, permanence and well-being of children in care,” DCFS officials wrote in the plan submitted in federal court.
“It’s a major lift,” said DCFS Director George Sheldon, who agreed the agency needs an overhaul.
U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Alonso is currently reviewing the plan, which aims to improve accountability and the lives of the children the agency is charged with protecting. Revamping a failed residential monitoring system also stands as a major component.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which monitors DCFS as the result of a long-standing consent decree, sought the court’s assistance after the Tribune’s 2014 “Harsh Treatment” series. The investigation revealed that hundreds of juvenile wards were reportedly abused, assaulted and raped each year at the taxpayer-funded residential centers. Thousands ran away and some were lured into prostitution as a means to survive.
Just last week, Shaquan Allen, a 16-year-old state ward, died at the private Allendale Association residential center in Lake Villa, and an employee accused of placing the teen in a “chokehold” was charged Saturday with manslaughter in Allen’s death. A DCFS official said the agency has 53 wards at Allendale but has halted placements there as an investigation proceeds.
The ACLU’s Benjamin Wolf has represented the children in the consent decree for more than two decades. Tapped as the group’s legal director last year, Wolf has witnessed tumultuous times throughout DCFS’ history but said he was encouraged by Sheldon’s direction.
“I think there’s good reason for hope,” Wolf said. “I would have liked to move faster to develop more resources for children, but there were good reasons to be patient rather than to rush, and to do it right rather than do it quickly. The suffering of my clients, some of it will go on for a while, and that’s never easy. But system change takes time.”
The reform plan contains nearly 40 initiatives that will be tracked and evaluated by outside groups. Among the objectives is to change the culture of DCFS and retrain employees, starting at the top by instructing supervisors to manage, coach and evaluate frontline caseworkers. The bold step will be phased in in small pieces, with a projected completion date in 2019.
The court filing also cites a number of pilot programs, some of which are already underway, to strengthen community-based care for children and youths and provide support for so-called dually involved youth, meaning they’re involved in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.
The therapeutic foster care pilot across Cook, Kane and Winnebago counties would serve as an alternative to sending youths to residential centers. The goal is to place at least 40 children in the first year and an additional 100 the following year in licensed homes where at least one parent stayed home, according to the plan. There would be a clear “no eject, no reject” policy for the children in the programs.
Another pilot in downstate Champaign, Ford, Iroquois and Vermilion counties uses a centralized team to coordinate care for DCFS wards with severe behavioral or psychiatric needs who may not have found success in traditional foster homes.
Increasing the number of therapeutic foster homes should reduce the amount of time youths spend in residential treatment centers while also providing them with homelike settings in which to grow up, the report outlined. Department officials said the agency has already moved more than 300 youths out of residential into less-restrictive settings, though in some cases they were placed in group homes.
Still, the plan does not do enough to address the children who are languishing in residential centers, psychiatric hospitals and juvenile detention facilities because they have no place to go, wrote Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris in a letter to the court. One 9-year-old girl spent 201 days in a shelter waiting for a specialized foster home, he wrote.
“They’re in all kinds of inappropriate settings,” said Yvonne Zehr, chief deputy of the juvenile division at the Public Guardian’s office. “We didn’t see anything in the plan (saying), ‘In the immediate near future, here’s how we’re going to solve the placement shortages.'”
Zehr also questioned the long-term plan for monitoring residential treatment centers.
For years, DCFS relied on its own monitors to oversee the roughly 50 residential treatment centers in the state. The federal judge last year agreed to allow independent monitors inside the facilities when it became clear the agency’s own oversight was inadequate.
External monitors will remain in the interim, but the plan keeps open the possibility of reverting to internal DCFS monitors in the future.
“I want to develop the internal expertise to do that, but it is clear that right now we don’t have that capability,” Sheldon said. “If we were to do that, we’re going to have to regain the public trust that in fact we’re competent to do it.”
Sheldon has made it a priority to change the agency’s approach to residential centers, a number of which were fraught with problems and had evolved into a placement for children as opposed to a temporary therapeutic intervention.
Gov. Bruce Rauner appointed Sheldon to helm DCFS after it faced significant setbacks in care and funding and struggled with a near-constant change in leadership. Sheldon was confirmed as director in January after joining the agency a year earlier as its ninth leader in five years.
At a recent news conference, Rauner seemed pleased with his selection, praising Sheldon for “leading a transformation of the department” that was in “shambles” before Rauner took office.
Although some of the reforms outlined in the plan have begun, a number are still in the development stage. Rauner did not address the state’s budget crisis in his remarks. Unlike some state agencies, DCFS’ funding is protected under the consent decree.
But the potential impact on DCFS is looming, said Andrea Durbin, chief executive officer of Illinois Collaboration on Youth, an association of facilities and child welfare agencies. Many of the preventive services aimed at keeping kids out of DCFS have had to close down or suspend their programs, she said.
“They’re playing politics with people’s lives and causing long-term damage to the capacity and infrastructure of community-based providers,” she said.
Children’s Home + Aid was forced to suspend a program that last year served 70 youths in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood who had run away or were not allowed to return home. Since then, another provider stepped in temporarily. That program was part of a much larger statewide service that last year helped about 7,000 youths, Durbin said. The program has been suspended in McHenry County and scaled back in Boone and Winnebago counties, she added.
“I don’t think DCFS is equipped to see another several hundred kids come into foster care who might otherwise not,” said Nancy Ronquillo, president and CEO of Children’s Home + Aid. “It’s a costly and protracted process to be able to move back into communities successfully and join back with families.”
Ronquillo contrasted the damaging impact of the budget impasse with the promising reforms outlined in the DCFS plan.
“That’s the paradox,” she said.
State Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, too, said she was pleased to see DCFS working to reduce the number of youths in residential centers but worried the budget stalemate could jeopardize the progress.
“If we don’t build up our community mental health and substance abuse programs — because right now they’re getting decimated — this is going to undermine everything long-term,” Steans said.
Sheldon said he remains optimistic that there will be a budget in place by the time the department rolls out some of the plan’s major initiatives in late summer and early fall.
At a recent court hearing, the federal judge asked for additional details on the plan. The parties are due back in court in June, when the judge could decide whether he will approve the plan.
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