•August 29, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Apparently unable to care for our own youth, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) recently tried to place some of its wards (wards of the state, meaning you and me) with Indiana state social service agencies. But the Hoosiers rejected our pleas: “Sorry, Illinois, but you’re a bad payment risk.”
ProPublica, a non-profit investigative news organization, reported recently that DCFS wards were languishing in Illinois mental health facilities much longer than necessary because DCFS had no place for them to be placed. Thus, the efforts to place wards in nearby Indiana facilities. A DCFS staffer noted that parents of institutionalized children will often refuse to take their children back, which creates an immediate need for placement.
Throughout my half-century of observing Illinois, DCFS has continually been on the front pages—for such as allegedly failing to prevent a child’s death by neglect, or for failing to take another child out of a home where an abusive, possibly violent boyfriend lurks in the background, just out of sight.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.