The recent news that DCFS
investigations are missing the mark isn’t news to me. I have sued DCFS
more than a dozen times and have established, through federal court
findings, that the state’s child-welfare system has a staggering rate of
error in its investigations. But the mistakes my cases have
demonstrated are much different from the ones highlighted by recent news
stories about child deaths. In fact, they are just the opposite: They
show a DCFS too quick on the trigger to pull children from the care of
suitable parents.
Without any oversight,
review, or lawfully vested authority, DCFS regularly removes children
from their homes and places them with relatives — a coercive separation
that is often based on nothing the parent has actually done to harm the
child.
DCFS also rampantly labels
parents as guilty by innuendo, only to have its determinations
overturned once a neutral judge reviews the evidence. These widespread
errors never see the light of day because they don’t even make it to a
juvenile courtroom, let alone a newsroom.
In other words, DCFS finds abuse where it doesn’t exist, while real abusers fall through the cracks.
The pain and trauma caused
by the overly intrusive investigative practices leave long-lasting scars
for the families and children DCFS touches.
In fact, in 2012, the
Illinois Supreme Court declared void a policy under which DCFS
investigates nearly a third of its cases annually. Instead of tightening
its investigations in the face of this ruling and complying with the
companion changes in state law, DCFS has continued to investigate and
label more than 6,000 parents as child neglectors without any evidence
of actual neglectful conduct in many of these cases. As a result, the
Family Defense Center had to sue DCFS again in September to compel the
agency to follow the clear mandate of the law.
The cases our office
defends are not at all like the horrendous death cases recently
reported. Our cases often involve a parent who turned her head at the
same moment a child fell, or a false allegation made by a disgruntled
spouse in a bitter divorce proceeding. This is the typical fare for
DCFS. In fact, such situations account for more than two-thirds of the
DCFS caseload.
In the wake of the recent
tragedies, it’s important to keep in mind that calls for more DCFS
investigators won’t fix the problem. That’s because DCFS resources are
being misallocated by targeting too many families that shouldn’t be
swept into the system in the first place. DCFS simply cannot investigate
its way out of a lack of standards for assessing child abuse and
neglect, insufficient training, failure to coordinate services (or to
provide appropriate follow-up services) and lack of accountability.
The real challenge is to
pare down the DCFS caseload in order to allow DCFS to focus on the
serious abuse cases, so that tragic deaths do not recur. One step in the
right direction would be for DCFS to renew its efforts to deflect cases
based on poverty into support services so that it can concentrate
precious investigative resources on serious physical and sexual abuse
cases.
Children deserve protection
from abusive parents and caregivers, and the public is entitled to
demand such protection from DCFS. But accountability starts with having a
clear definition of abuse and neglect and an ability to recognize which
cases should be investigated and which families should be left alone.
Not all Hotline calls are credible, and only a fraction of DCFS calls
involve actual or serious threats of harm to a child.
To better protect children
from dangerous parents, DCFS needs to stop trying to protect children
from good parents who have not abused or neglected them. On both sides
of getting it right, there is much room for improvement.
Diane L. Redleaf is the
founder and executive director of the Family Defense Center, an
organization that advocates for justice for families in the child
welfare system.
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