COA Put Illinois DCFS on Probation in January 2012 UPDATED
Though the website of Illinois Department of Children and Family Services does NOT say so, the Council on Accreditation (COA) placed them on probation on January 11, 2012. The COA link does not indicate the length of the probation nor the reason. See COA link here and scroll to the bottom third of the page to view the listing.
See the Illinois DCFS site and the lack of acknowledgement of this probation status here.
Hat tip to a reader for this information!
This is particularly interesting in light of the important Robert Gaskill case that we are following.
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update: Illinois’ Horrendous Financial Mismanagement will severely impact the already-messed-up DCFS
“Already in open violation of a federal decree on child welfare investigations, the Illinois agency that oversees well-being of families faces new budget cuts that could lead to hundreds of worker layoffs and the elimination of services that have helped keep thousands of children out of foster care.
The Department of Children and Family Services would see some $85 million in trims under the budget lawmakers passed last month to deal with the state’s financial crisis.
Several agencies are facing steep reductions and difficult decisions as a result, but DCFS Director Richard Calica said the budget cuts could be particularly painful for his department. Each year, it has contact with some 150,000 Illinois children and initiates about 63,000 investigations through a child-abuse hotline.
“The safety net that we’ve provided for the community has been eroded based on what the people of Illinois have allocated to our work,” DCFS Director Richard Calica, who took over in December, told The Associated Press.
Gov. Pat Quinn, who has called the cuts unacceptable, could make changes before signing the budget, which must take effect July 1. Calica said he and Quinn have been meeting over ways to restore cuts, though Quinn has declined to provide details. In the meantime Calica said he can’t plan on a break.
“That’s bad management,” he said. “I’ll only plan on what I actually have in my own hand.”
Union officials say they fear the cuts would undercut major reforms the department has made since the 1990s, including cutting the number of children in foster care from 52,000 to about 15,000.
“That is totally unacceptable and amounts to turning back the clock and rolling back progress that has been made over the last two decades,” said Anders Lindall, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.
The scaled-down approximately $1.2 billion budget would cut some $27 million from personnel eliminating about 375 positions, or roughly 12 percent of the nearly 3,000 department employees.
The timing is particularly troubling as the agency is also under fire for being unstaffed in critical areas.
The department admitted this year that it was in violation of a 1991 consent decree that settled a class-action lawsuit brought by the ACLU. The decree sets levels of child-protection and foster-care services. The rules have some exceptions, but generally investigators cannot be assigned to more than 12 new cases a month.
The agency has around 490 investigators when it should have about 615, said agency spokesman Kendall Marlowe. If DCFS doesn’t comply soon they could be taken back to court. Currently more than half of investigators have been assigned more work than allowed.
Sharon Richardson has been an investigator in Cook County for more than a decade. Ideally workers should not have more than 24 cases at a time, earlier this month she had 40 pending cases at once. Her work focusing on the most serious abuse cases has become triage.
“It’s almost like on an emergency basis. I do what I can,” she said. “You don’t have a choice. You can’t refuse cases if there’s nobody or person to take the cases.”
At times the lack of adequate inspections leads to disturbing discoveries. The Chicago Tribune reported this month that a 16-year-old with cerebral palsy was starved to 23 pounds, and DCFS workers didn’t note that until a fourth home visit. The mother later was placed on 18 months’ probation and ordered to take parenting classes.
Despite the troubles, lawmakers say their hands were tied when it came to the budget. Illinois is billions of dollars behind in paying bills. It faces an approximately $85 billion gap in meeting pension payments and recently approved Medicaid reforms that cut $1.6 billion from health care spending.
“The state of Illinois has very little money to spend. We really are a state in dire fiscal situation,” said state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, a Chicago Democrat who was on the committee that set spending “We have done some dire things in this budget.”
Calica said the first things that must be eliminated are non-essential services not mandated by law. That includes violence prevention programs and what’s known as intact family services, where case workers’ focus is to keep children who aren’t facing immediate danger with their families.
That could include ensuring a mentally-ill parent is diligent about medication or looking out for signs of long-term neglect, according to supervisor Lori Welcher-Evans. She has spent nearly two decades doing just that and solving problems so that children don’t have to be removed from the home. About 5,000 families rely on intact family services.
“I’m at a loss for words,” she said when asked about the impact of the potential cuts.
Kenneth Webster, a Chicago father of three, said those services helped him get back on track and full custody of his three children when their mother faced substance abuse. He called the agency himself to keep the family together. A case worker facilitated family meetings, offered parenting classes and helped set a long-term plan.
“There are a lot of people out there like me who need to get on the ball,” said the 50-year-old former truck driver. “I love the heck out of these children. I wanted to make sure I was right.”
Even Calica has admitted that such services have helped keep children out of foster care and he expects the number in foster care to rise. That has child advocates are already cringing. They allege the cuts may end up costing Illinois more.
“You’re removing the child from his family and putting him in substitute care, we don’t want to do that when we don’t have to,” said Margaret Berglind, president of the Child Care Association of Illinois. “The child, no matter what may have happened, is still bonded with that family.”
Illinois child welfare agency mulls cuts, layoffs
[WSLS 6/19/12 by Sophia Tareen/Associated Press]
Update 2: “Illinois’ state child-welfare agency has agreed in court to hire more people to investigate claims of abuse and neglect.
A spokesman says the Department of Children and Family Services hopes to have 100 additional investigators in place by October. Kendall Marlowe said Wednesday that means each investigator will get only nine new cases each month.
That’s well under the court-imposed limit, which is generally 12 news cases a month.
The agency will reach the staffing goal by cutting administrative jobs and moving people to investigations.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois calls the agreement “an important step” in reversing problems at the agency, which has been hit with deep budget cuts.”
Illinois agency agrees to beef up child abuse investigations
[Sun Times 8/8/12 by Associated Press]
Update 3: “Since 1990, the state has dropped more than 35,000 children from its foster care rolls to its current population of about 15,000. A variety of initiatives led to the decline. One prevention program named Intact has been widely credited with keeping thousands of at-risk children with their families and out of foster care.
But a $50 million cut by the Legislature to the Division of Children and Family Services enacted in August threatens to diminish the Intact program, raising protests among local court and police officials in Southern Illinois.
State officials said they had no choice but to cut back the program to serve fewer families and contract the services out to private agencies. The head of DCFS has said the move is likely to drive more Illinois children into costlier foster care while putting others at risk for abuse and neglect.
Others say it’s too early to tell whether more children will end up in foster care. Mark Testa, a former research director with Illinois DCFS, said policy changes and cuts such as these were being made nationwide because of budgetary concerns. Cuts in prevention programs may more adequately target needier families, or they may backfire, said Testa, now a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
“The benefit of a protest like this is to make people aware that we should be paying attention, and we should monitor the impact of these changes very carefully in the next few years,” he said. “If there are negative impacts, the time to act is very important.”
State officials estimate about a third fewer families — roughly 1,500 — will be served through Intact because of the cuts. The program matches caseworkers with families at risk of losing children to foster care, offering services such as counseling, parental education and treatment for addictions. Last year, about 4,500 families participated in Intact programs, said Division of Children and Family Services spokesman Kendall Marlow.
They include the Lee family of Alton. Four years ago, Marvin and Cherie Lee hit a wall when they tried to get custody of their granddaughter, then 4, after the child had been removed from her mother’s abusive household and put into foster care.
Marvin Lee said judges and caseworkers felt his family didn’t have the resources or access to intensive services needed to help the girl. She had severe behavioral issues from her abuse and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
But Lee said that once they were referred to an Intact social worker with DCFS, they had an advocate and mentor. She set up the counseling and educational services they needed so their grandchild could come home and be cared for properly. Without Intact, Lee said, he is certain his granddaughter, now 8, would have spent her life in and out of institutions.
“We would have never got her,” he said. “She would have still been up in foster care. She was in and out of psych hospitals and acting out, and all she wanted to do was come home to us.”
In Southern Illinois, where the Lees will lose their longtime Intact caseworker, local judges — as well as law enforcement and social workers — have taken the unusual step of publicly speaking out against the budget cuts.
“Every time one of these human services cuts happen, I have to spend more money to train my officers to be half as proficient as one of these DCFS officers,” said Alton Police Chief David Hayes, who said his officers would probably be swamped with child-protection calls. “We will never be as proficient as they are, because that takes specialized training.”
Last week, hours before a Madison County rally on the cuts at which Hayes and others spoke, Madison County Circuit Court Chief Judge Ann Callis’ office released a rare public statement in support of the 28 local state-employed Intact caseworkers expected to be laid off next month.
“There’s concern more children are going to end up in foster care and more children are going to end up on our docket and be at risk because they’re not getting these services,” explained Janet Heflin, a Madison County associate judge presiding over the abuse and neglect docket.
Ann Dingwell of Belleville, a recently retired DCFS caseworker who was a supervisor for the Intact program, said the program dealt mostly with families coping with substance abuse or poverty issues — offering everything from rides to help with housing. She said state caseworkers were most successful with these clients because they had clout with the courts to remind them that custody is at stake if they don’t actively participate in services.
Prior to the budget cut, far more families qualified for the program. For example, caseworkers had the option of referring families who had been investigated for potential abuse or neglect, even when those allegations were determined to be “unfounded.” But under new rules to keep enrollment costs down, caseworkers can refer Intact services only to households with founded neglect or abuse complaints. Additionally, only households with children under 7 now qualify for services.
Dingwell said the new qualifying rules eliminated families with the most potential to succeed through the program.
Under the cuts, all of the remaining Intact work will be contracted out to private agencies. About 285 state caseworkers are expected to be laid off to cut $27 million in payroll and benefits. Last year, about 80 percent of Illinois’ Intact services were provided by DCFS, and 20 percent were contracted out.
Children’s Home and Aid in Granite City expects to handle 100 more Intact families this year under the new contracting system, said Renae Storey, a vice president for the nonprofit group’s Southern Illinois region. The past year they had 30 families. They expect to hire more staff to handle cases.
But critics such as Carla Gillespie, the AFSCME Local 1805 union representative for state caseworkers, said DCFS employees were more experienced and better qualified to understand when a child is safe or needs to be removed from a home.
“We’re going to have 15-year veterans hit the streets without the jobs they do best,” she warned. “You can have all the policies and procedures in the world, but the truth is when our worker goes into that home, it’s still a matter of instinct. It’s still just experience and your gut.”
Illinois budget cuts may send more kids to foster care
[St. Louis Post-Dispatch 9/18/12 by Nancy Cambria]
Update 4: The Masters of Kicking the Can Forward, Illinois, has temporarily “averted” DCF layoffs. It would look bad so close to the election, ya know! We can’t have that.
“Nearly 300 workers slated to be laid off from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services have won a reprieve amid high hopes that the struggling agency can recoup funding from the state Legislature.
A nearly $90 million cut in the agency’s $1.2 billion budget had earlier prompted administrators to announce the elimination of staff caseworkers from an intervention program that attempts to keep troubled families together.
In separate messages to DCFS staff Thursday, agency director Richard Calica and union leaders confirmed that half of the budget cuts are expected to be reversed when the Legislature returns Nov. 27 for its fall veto session.
There still is no guarantee of that, and the revenue source is uncertain, but Calica said he hopes no employees will be laid off and his plan to reorganize the agency to better protect at-risk children will proceed. Some 100 unfilled positions, equaling a 6 percent reduction, still will be eliminated.
“Members of the General Assembly from both chambers and both parties have expressed support for this approach,” Calica wrote to staff. “The past few months have been trying for all of us, and I appreciate the professionalism you’ve shown in the face of such uncertainty. With the support of the General Assembly, a solution is now in sight.”
Last year, 14,000 children remained in their homes after their parents received help through the intact family services program, according to DCFS data. DCFS workers handled 80 percent of the cases, while the remaining 20 percent were referred to contractual private agencies.
The Tribune has reported that the DCFS cuts would have meant at least 1,500 fewer families would be eligible for the program, a 33 percent reduction that critics argued would result in higher foster care rolls.
In recent months, the newspaper also has documented the agency’s clogged hotline and staggering investigative caseloads that have led to overdue and sloppy child-protection investigations. Questions have been raised about whether some recent child-abuse deaths could have been avoided.
The seniority-based layoffs were expected to begin this month. DCFS officials said that if the money is restored, the agency through a reorganization plan could beef up its child-protection investigative unit by 138 workers and reduce caseloads to below the mandated ratio of about 12 cases to 1 worker.
In June, Gov. Pat Quinn pushed to stave off the layoffs by diverting some savings from his plan to close some state prison facilities. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, which represents DCFS and prison employees, argues that the prison closings are unsafe and suggests looking elsewhere for the money.
Though state revenues have increased beyond projections, lawmakers such as Rep. Sara Feigenholtz said so have Illinois’ bills. The North Side Democrat said that while lawmakers still have many questions for Calica to ensure the money isn’t wasted, their ongoing discussions are encouraging.
“I think it’s still ‘wait and see,'” said Feigenholtz, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee for Human Services. “We never like to lay anyone off, but we need to ensure the department does due diligence with the taxpayers’ dollars and makes good service decisions on behalf of children.”
[Chicago Tribune 10/12/12 by Christy Gutowski]
Update 5: New audit finds more problems with DCFS
Hat tip to a reader for forwarding on the following information:
“The state agency charged with investigating child abuse claims continues to flounder when it comes to meeting deadlines for initiating and completing investigations, according to a new audit.
In a report released Wednesday, Illinois Auditor General Bill Holland said the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services saw a significant jump in the number of abuse cases that weren’t determined to be unfounded or credible within a required 60 day timeframe.
The audit found that 884 of nearly 65,000 allegations missed the deadline, compared to 115 of 63,000 the previous year. It was the biggest backlog since 2006, when over 1,000 cases missed the deadline.
“Failure to make timely determinations of reports of abuse and neglect could delay the implementation of a service plan and result in further endangerment of the child,” Holland wrote in the audit.
The findings come as DCFS has grappled with a number of budget cuts in recent years. The $1.1 billion agency had about 103 fewer employees in 2012 compared to 2010.
But, beginning in January, a reorganization of the agency has resulted in 138 additional child abuse in-vestigators.
Agency spokesman Dave Clarkin said there is currently a backlog of an estimated 300 cases.
“That’s largely because we’ve received a record number of suspicious child deaths this year, which take longer,” Clarkin said Wednesday.
The agency says it receives, investigates and acts upon a report of child abuse or neglect every five minutes, child sex abuse every two hours, and the death of a child by abuse or neglect every day and a half.
Clarkin said 99.6 percent of the cases are initiated within the 60 day time period.
In addition to failing to determine whether some cases are warranted in a timely manner, the agency failed to initiate investigations into every case within a 24 hour time period, the audit found.
Holland also found the agency did not review child deaths in a timely manner
Clarkin said the agency is aware of the delays, but is committed to making sure investigations are thorough.”
[The Southern 6/20/13 by Kurt Erickson]
See the 9-page summary of the audit here
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