1.1.1 The Legal Context for Child Welfare Services in Illinois | 1.1.2 Mission and Purpose of the Department of Children and Family Services | 1.1.3 Assumptions Governing Intervention | 1.1.4 System of Care Delivery of Service | 1.1.5 Programs | 1.1.6 Services | 1.1.7 Summary Regarding the System of Care
The provision of child welfare services in Illinois must occur in compliance with the requirements of applicable Federal and State laws, regulations, and procedures, and in compliance with several court consent decrees. The basis of these laws is to ensure safety and permanency for the children who receive services from the Department, to respect the rights of the family and to provide standards upon which the federal government provides funding to the state. The DCFS Rules and Procedures are continually changing to be consistent with the changes in current social work strategies and state and federal laws. The DCFS Rules have the same authority as any other law in the State of Illinois and must be adhered to by the worker. Although every case that is referred to the Department does not lead to Juvenile Court intervention, the case may result in proceedings in other venues such as Federal Court, Criminal Court, Civil Court, and or Tribal Court as well as the DCFS Administrative Hearing Unit. Therefore, when a worker receives a case, the worker should give serious consideration to any document created since it will impact not only the safety and permanency of the child, but may have legal consequences for the child, family worker, and the Department. By conforming to the current prescriptions set out by the Department in the Rules and Procedures, and by understanding the process and the role of each of the participants, the worker is more likely to reach a positive outcome for the child, the family, the community and themselves.
Following is a brief summary of the most important laws and consent decrees.
The three most important Federal laws are Title IV-B and Title IV-E of the Social Security Act (SSA) and the Inter-Ethnic Placement Act (IEPA).
Title IV-B establishes the requirements a state must meet in order to receive federal funding to assist the State to provide:
· family support services, time limited (up to 15 months) family reunification services, and adoption promotion and support services; and
· general child welfare services.
Title IV-E establishes the requirements a state must meet in order to receive reimbursement from the Federal government for the costs of providing foster care services to children who are determined to be eligible for Title IV-E foster care.
Title IV-E was created in 1980 by the federal enactment of Public Law (PL) 96-272, the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. It was enacted by Congress to facilitate the timely achievement of permanent living arrangements for children in foster care. When enacted originally, Title IV-E established, among others, the following requirements:
· A child must be determined eligible for Title IV-E foster care based on established criteria, including but not limited to being related to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program during the six months prior to entering foster care.
· States must make reasonable efforts to prevent a child from entering foster care and make reasonable efforts to reunify a child with her/his family when a child had to be placed in foster care.
· There must be a written case plan for all children in foster care and their families. The case plan must include, among other requirements, the permanency goal for the child, the reasons the child is in foster care, and the services which will be provided or offered to the child and family to resolve the problems which caused the need for foster care.
· There must be periodic reviews of the progress toward achieving permanency for a child conducted by an independent third party (i.e., someone who is not in the same administrative unit as is the person providing services to the child and family).
Despite the promise PL 96-272 held for promoting and encouraging the timely achievement of permanency for children in foster care, the fact is literally thousands of children nationwide, including thousands of children in Illinois, continued to live in foster care for long periods of time without achieving the legal and emotional security which a permanent, loving, nurturing home and family provides a child. In Illinois, for example, the median length of time a child spent in foster care had grown to 42 months or 3-1/2 years by the end of State Fiscal Year 1998 (ending June 30, 1998). This was an increase of six months per child from one year earlier.
Because of growing public concern about the safety and permanency of children served by child welfare systems across the United States, Congress passed and President Clinton signed on November 19, 1997 the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997. ASFA was the first substantive amendment to Title IV-E of the Social Security Act since its creation in 1980 by PL 96-272. Among other provisions, ASFA amended Title IV-E to:
· establish that in determining reasonable efforts to be made with respect to a child that a "child's health and safety shall be the paramount concern";
· exempt a state from making reasonable efforts to prevent placement or to reunify a child with her/his family when certain circumstances exist, including:
- if a court has determined that the parent has subjected the child to aggravated circumstances as defined in state law (which may include abandonment, torture, chronic abuse and sexual abuse);
- if a court has determined that the parent has committed the following against another child of the parent: murder, voluntary manslaughter; aided or abetted, attempted, conspired or solicited to commit murder or voluntary manslaughter; or felony assault that results in serious bodily injury to the child or another child of the parent;
- parental rights of the parent to a sibling have been involuntarily terminated.
· require states to make reasonable efforts to secure an adoptive placement for a child whose parents' rights to the child have been terminated;
· require a judicial permanency hearing for a child no later than 12 months after the date a child entered foster care and no less frequently than every 12 months thereafter for as long as the child remains in foster care; and
· requires a state to file or join a petition to a court for the termination of a parent's rights to a child when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months, unless:
- a child is living with a relative;
- the State agency has documented in the case plan a compelling reason that filing a petition is not in the best interest of the child; or
- the State has not provided to the family of the child, consistent with the time period in the case plan, such services the State deemed necessary for the safe return of the child to the child's home.
The third important Federal law is the IEPA. In its simplest form, IEPA prohibits any consideration of a child's race or ethnicity as a factor in deciding which permanent placement will be in a child's best interest.
This means that a caseworker is absolutely prohibited from considering a child's race or ethnicity in any way, shape or form in his/her decision-making related to which permanent placement is in a child's best interest.
There are several Illinois laws which directly impact the provision of child welfare services to abused, neglected or dependent children and their families:
· the Children and Family Services Act which specifies the general duties and responsibilities of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS or the Department);
· the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act (ANCRA) which establishes the duties and responsibilities of the Department to receive, investigate, and respond to reports of suspected child abuse or neglect;
· the Juvenile Court Act which establishes the authority of the Juvenile Court to intervene with children and their families;
· the Adoption Act which specifies the grounds for parental unfitness and procedures governing the adoption of children;
· the Child Care Act which establishes the criteria and procedures governing the licensing and regulation of child welfare agencies, foster family homes, group homes, child care institutions, day care agencies, and individual day care providers;
· the Interstate Compact on the Placement of children which governs the placement of children in foster care from one State to another; and
· the Interstate Compact on Adoption and Medical Assistance which governs the provision of medical care to children adopted in one state and who subsequently move to another state.
· the Foster Parent Law which designates the rights and responsibilities of foster parents as members of the child welfare team and requires child welfare agencies to develop an annual implementation plan.
· the Licensure of Direct Child Welfare Services Employees and Supervisors law sets licensing standards of qualification, education and training for those who seek to work in the capacity of a direct child welfare services employee. This law requires that child welfare supervisors and workers, both public and private, be licensed by DCFS before they can carry cases. The Illinois Code of Civil Procedure refers to situations when a worker is asked to certify or verify documentation provided to the courts which they believe is true or based on information and belief that it is true. The Code states that, "Any person who makes false statement, material to the issue of point in question, which he does not believe to be true, in any pleading, affidavit or other document certified by such person...shall be guilty of a Class 3 felony," a criminal offense.
In Illinois, as at the national level, professionals, advocates, members of the Illinois General Assembly, and the Governor's staff had grown increasingly concerned about the literally thousands of children in the Illinois foster care system who were not achieving safe, permanent homes in a timely fashion.
In 1997, Governor Edgar convened a broad-based group of persons to determine what should be done to achieve safe, permanent homes for foster children in an expeditious manner. The result was the enactment of three major pieces of legislation which, taken together, constituted the Permanency Initiative of 1997: HB 165, HB 66, and SB 1099.
Among other provisions, these Illinois laws:
· established that a child's health and safety will always be the paramount concern;
· established a requirement that a diligent search must be made early after initiation of services for any missing parent or other family member who might be a resource for a child;
· required a court permanency hearing for each child no later than 12 months after the date the child entered foster care, and no less frequently than every six months thereafter, as long as the child is in foster care;
· established in law the permanency goals from which a court must select a permanency goal for a child at each permanency hearing;
· established criteria a court must consider when determining what action is in a child's best interest;
· established that the Department does not have to make reasonable efforts to reunify a child when certain aggravating circumstances exist or when a court selected a permanency goal other than one of the three reunification-related permanency goals;
· established that the Department may pursue expedited termination of parental rights to a child when certain aggravated circumstances exist;
· established that the Department may engage in concurrent planning (i.e., simultaneously working to reunify a child while also pursuing an alternative permanent living arrangement for the child should reunification efforts fail) when certain aggravating circumstances exist; and
· made significant changes to the criteria defining parental unfitness in the Adoption Act to make termination of parental rights more timely.
As noted under the discussion of Federal laws, the ASFA was signed into law on November 19, 1998. This was approximately six months after the enactment of the 1997 Illinois Permanency Initiative.
An analysis of the federal ASFA identified some variations between AFSA and Illinois state law which had to be reconciled and conformed.
Also, in the interim, the Department had been advised by the Federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) that Illinois law was not fully compliant with the provisions of the federal IEPA. Thus, to assure Illinois law conformed to federal law (ASFA and IEPA), Public Act 90-608 (Senate Bill 1339) was passed by the Illinois General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Edgar on June 30, 1998.
The Illinois child welfare system currently is operating under eight State or Federal court consent decrees.
Following is a summary of each of the decrees:
· Aristotle P. v. McDonald
Filed by the Cook County Public Guardian, this Consent Decree requires DCFS:
- to make a diligent search to locate a joint placement for siblings;
- to place siblings together unless the case involves certain recognized exceptions such as:
* best interest to place or remain apart
* unable to locate joint placement despite diligent search
* court order
* special needs require different placements
* child at risk if placed with siblings
* joint placement would require removal from current placement and best interest not to move child
- to facilitate visitation twice a month between and among siblings who are placed apart; and
- to encourage frequent contact between and among siblings by phone and mail.
· Bates v. McDonald
Filed by the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, this Consent Decree requires DCFS:
- to provide weekly parent-child visits for children in substitute care with a "return home" goal;
- to increase visits in length unless harmful to a child;
- to arrange visits in parent's home unless harmful to a child;
- to resolve transportation or other problems making visits difficult to arrange;
- to establish a visitation plan within three days of non-emergency placement and within ten days of emergency placement;
- to begin visits within the first two weeks after DCFS assumes temporary custody or guardianship; and
- to provide statistical information related to visitation.
· BH v. McDonald
Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), this Consent Decree requires DCFS to meet a standard of care that:
- protects children in DCFS custody from foreseeable and-preventable physical harm, including minimally adequate food, shelter, and clothing;
- provides minimally adequate health care including mental health care for serious mental health needs;
- provides minimally adequate training, education, and services to enable children to secure their own safety and provide for their needs.
To meet these standards the decree contains specific provisions for:
- protective services
- screenings and assessments
- case plans and permanency goals
- administrative case reviews
- case staffing and management (caseload ratios)
- placement and other services
- case records and information systems
- health care, education, adoption
- licensing, training, and quality assurance
· Burgos v. Suter
Filed by the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, this Consent Decree requires DCFS:
- to provide services in Spanish for Spanish-speaking clients;
- to maintain and/or hire a certain minimum number of bilingual employees in each of the six clusters in Chicago area offices in certain specific locations;
- to provide a 24-hour central telephone number to assist Spanish-speaking clients with questions or complaints regarding services;
- to provide certain documents with accompanying Spanish translation and when signature on English document is required, to obtain an affidavit from bilingual employee stating that the document has been translated and explained in Spanish;
- to place Spanish-speaking children of Spanish-speaking Hispanic clients with Spanish-speaking foster parents;
- to provide child welfare and counseling services to Spanish-speaking Hispanic clients by bilingual employees (vendors must also provide); and
- bilingual social workers serving this class shall not have caseloads larger than others in same office working with English-speaking clients.
· Hill v. Erickson
Filed by the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, this Consent Decree requires DCFS:
- to provide adequate placement and programming for DCFS wards who are pregnant and/or parenting;
- to consult with quality assurance, ACR unit, and training unit to ensure needs of class members are addressed.
· In Re Lee/Wesley
Filed by the Cook County Public Guardian, the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, and Legal Advocacy Services, this Consent Decree requires:
- the DCFS Guardianship Administrator to notify the Guardianship and Advocacy Commission within 24 hours of admission of a Cook County ward to a mental health or drug dependency facility; and
- that there be no holding of wards in psychiatric facilities longer than medically necessary.
· Katie I. et al v. Ted Kimbrough, the Chicago Board of Education, et al
This Consent Decree requires DCFS:
- to notify the Board of Education when a ward is admitted to a shelter;
- to provide the Board of Education with appropriate identification of DCFS wards in shelter care;
- to enable enrollment in an educational program; and
- to verify immunization records of wards in shelter care.
· Norman v. Suter
Filed by the Legal Assistance Foundation, this Consent Decree requires DCFS:
- to not remove children from or refuse to return children to their parents solely because of poverty or homelessness;
- to make reasonable efforts to give services to remedy poverty-related conditions;
- to provide housing, temporary shelter, cash assistance, food, clothing, child care, emergency caretakers, advocacy with public and community agencies;
- not to remove or prevent return because parent(s) or guardian is living in a shelter or with others or in housing considered too small for family size or which has building code violations, unless a child is in imminent danger;
- to make reasonable efforts to keep children in parents' custody in domestic violence situations unless imminent danger, including exploring alternative housing and shelters for battered women;
- to provide cash assistance for rent, security or utility deposits, and furniture;
- to interact with Disabled People's Association (DPA) to ensure Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) eligibility for family for ninety days during period of DCFS protective custody or temporary custody;
- to provide assistance in obtaining housing;
- to provide in each DCFS office a manual of referral services for payments, goods, and services related to living circumstances;
- to document reasonable efforts;
- to establish reasonable time guidelines to return children or initiate court action to do so;
- to establish risk assessment methods; and
- to establish a protocol for locating absent parents where appropriate.
These consent decrees all have the force of law. Therefore, caseworkers must comply with the requirements of the consent decrees as specified and explained in applicable Department rules and procedures.
As stated in the Introduction to this section, Federal and State law provide the parameters within which child welfare practice must occur. A caseworker is obligated to perform her/his duties and responsibilities in full compliance with the requirements of Federal and State law.
In performing her/his duties, a caseworker must always remember and act in accordance with the following principles and requirements of law:
· a child's health and safety must always be the paramount concern;
· a child's safety, permanency, and well-being are the three outcomes desired;
· a child placed in foster care for safety reasons should be in a safe, permanent home (i.e., permanency is achieved) no later than 24 months from the date the child entered foster care;
· a worker must make reasonable efforts to prevent a child's placement in foster care. However, if a child must be placed in foster care for safety reasons, the worker must make reasonable efforts to reunify a child with her/his family. Federal law requres that termination of parental rights must be sought for any child in foster care 15 of the most recent 22 months unless there is a compelling reason not to.
· a worker must make reasonable efforts to find as soon as possible an adoptive home for a child whose parent(s) has had their rights to the child terminated;
· placement decisions require a case by case approach. Race, culture or national origin are not to be routinely consider when placing a child. The Department or placing agency must ensure that their decisions rest on a child's particular and documented needs.
· a worker must comply with the requirements established by Federal and State law, the court consent decrees, and Department rules and procedures when delivering services to children and families. The caseworker must ensure that all possible financial benefits are claimed.
· A worker must have thorough documentation of the facts of the case including: with whom they spoke, who was present during the conversation, what the individual told them, what they saw, heard, and (if appropriate) smelled which the worker used as a basis for decision making.
Pursuant to Illinois law (Children and Family Services Act), DCFS is the state agency responsible for providing directly or through purchase of service public child welfare services to children and their families.
As articulated in the Department's Mission Statement, the mission of DCFS is to:
· Protect children who are reported to be abused or neglected and to increase their families' capacity to safely care for them.
· Provide for the well-being of children in our care.
· Provide appropriate, permanent families as quickly as possible for those children who cannot safely return home.
· Support early intervention and child abuse prevention activities.
· Work in partnerships with communities to fulfill this mission.
The Department is also the public agency which is responsible for licensing and regulating agencies or individuals who want to provide child welfare and/or child care services. Specifically, the Department licenses and regulates:
· child welfare agencies;
· foster family homes;
· group homes;
· child care institutions; and
· child care (day care) providers.
Finally, DCFS provides services to other agencies (SOAs). The most notable example of SOA is services to children from other states that are placed in foster care in Illinois. Such placements are made under the authority and procedures of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children.
The Department provides child welfare services through two primary methods:
· directly by Department staff who are assigned casework responsibility for children and families; and/or
· through purchase of service (POS) contracts with licensed child welfare agencies for full case management services for children in need of foster care (including unlicensed relative care and licensed foster care) and their families or children and families in need of family preservation (intact family) services.
Child welfare services provided by Department staff or purchased by the Department from purchase of service providers are directed to achievement of the following purposes:
· protecting and promoting the welfare of all children, including handicapped, homeless, dependent or neglected children;
· preventing or remedying, or assisting in the solution of problems which may result in the neglect, abuse, exploitation, or delinquency of children;
· preventing the unnecessary separation of children from their families by identifying family problems, assisting families in resolving their problems, and preventing breakup of the family where the prevention of child removal is desirable and possible;
· providing services to children and families so that children, who have been removed, may be returned to their families;
· placing children in suitable adoptive homes, in cases where restoration to the biological family is not possible or appropriate;
· assuring adequate care of children away from their homes, in cases where the child cannot be returned home or cannot be placed for adoption; and
· providing supportive services and living maintenance such as residential maternity homes and counseling which contributes to the physical, emotional and social well-being of children who are pregnant and unmarried. (Department Rule 304)
The Department must by law provide child welfare services to the following categories of children and families:
· abused and neglected children and their families;
· dependent children and their families;
· children under the age of 13 who have been adjudicated delinquent and their families; and
· children for whom the Department already has court ordered legal responsibility who are subsequently adjudicated delinquent or minors requiring authoritative intervention and their families. The Department is mandated to continue serving these children even if they are over age 13 when they are adjudicated delinquent or minors requiring authoritative intervention. However, the Department may transfer custody of a minor 10 years of age or over to the Juvenile Division of the Department of Corrections in accordance with the provisions of the Unified Code of Corrections (730 ILCS 5/3-10-11), if the minor has been adjudicated delinquent and it is determined by an interagency review committee that the Department lacks adequate facilities to care for and rehabilitate the minor. (Department Rule 304)
In addition, the Department may elect to provide child welfare services to other children and families who request services, who the Department deems to be in need of the services, and who the Department deems will benefit from the services.
A family's income, assets or other financial resources do not affect whether a family is eligible for services, they are important in determining eligibility for various federal benefits which help to fund services.
Children and families come to the attention of the Department in any of the following ways:
· through a report to the Department that a child is alleged to be abused, neglected, or dependent;
· through a referral from a purchase of service provider or another public or private agency;
· through a direct request for child welfare services from a family to keep the family together or to assist in alleviating problems which are likely to result in harm to the child; and
· through certain dispositional court orders. However, a minor charged with a criminal offense under the Criminal Code of 1961 or adjudicated delinquent shall not be placed in the custody of or committed to the Department by any court, except a minor less than 13 years of age committed to the Department under Section 5-705 of the Juvenile Court Act of 1987. (20 ILCS 505/5) (Department Rule 304)
There are several assumptions which guide the Department's intervention with a family and its children. They are:
· The health, safety and emotional well-being of a child, and therefore the child's best interest, are the paramount considerations.
· Families and children are served most effectively when they are served in or near their home community, thus protecting key family and community relationships.
· The Department intervenes with families only when it is determined that children are unsafe or at moderate to high risk of maltreatment.
· Children who are safe, or who can be made safe through interventions and services, should not be removed from their families.
· The placement of children in foster care is first and foremost a safety intervention. Only after it has been determined that a child cannot be safely reunified with the child's parents, is foster care used as a service to achieve permanency with an alternative family.
· Safe reunification of children who are placed in foster care for safety reasons is the preferred permanency outcome for them unless it is determined that conditions requiring expedited termination of parental rights exist.
· Children should stay in foster care longer than 12 months only when it is determined that no permanency outcome is achievable for them. For such children, intervention and services ultimately prepare them for self-sufficiency and/or result in their access to the appropriate adult systems of care.
· Children in need of specialized clinical services should receive needed services in the most community-based, clinically appropriate, least restrictive settings.
The delivery of services to children and families occurs through a system which has the following building blocks as its foundation:
· a focus on achieving the outcomes of safety, permanency and well-being for children and well-being for their families;
· the characteristics of being community-based, quality driven and accountable;
· strong, effective relationships with key partners in the community child protection system;
· defined, accessible programs and services to assist families to care for their children; and
· a reliance on Child and Family Teams as a primary method of intervention.
Following is more information on these building blocks of the service delivery system.
The Illinois child welfare system seeks to achieve three primary outcomes for children and families who are determined to need services from the Department:
· safety of children;
· permanency for children; and
· well-being for children and their families.
The health and safety of children are always the paramount concern regardless of the type of services being provided or the living arrangement for the child(ren). Every interaction with or on behalf of a child and/or family must have the child's safety as its primary focus. If a worker has any concern about a child's safety, the worker must always act in the best safety interest of a child.
Achievement of permanency based on the child's needs and sense of time is the second primary outcome. Permanency means providing a lifetime commitment to a child in a setting where he or she is safe, can have a sense of belonging and well-being and can live to adulthood.
The first preference for permanency, if it can be accomplished safely, is a child's own family. However, if the family is unwilling and/or unable to meet the child's needs, then the worker's obligation is to act professionally and swiftly to locate an alternative family which will provide the child safe, nurturing permanency.
The third outcome is well-being for the child and for her/his family.
For children, well-being means meeting the child's needs in nine domains:
· physical needs;
· family/attachment;
· health;
· emotional/psychological;
o developmental
o alcohol and other drug abuse
o behavioral/mental health
· educational/vocational;
· legal;
· safety;
· socialization;
· cultural/spiritual.
For children being served as part of an intact family, this means working with the parent(s) to assist them in meeting their child's well-being needs.
For children in foster care, this means working with the caregiver, the parent(s), and other service providers to assure the child's well-being needs are being met.
For parents and families, well-being means assisting the parent/family to develop and maintain the capacity (willingness) and capabilities (abilities) to care safely for their child and to meet the child's well-being needs.
Finally, and of crucial importance, the achievement of the outcomes of safety, permanency and well-being must occur based on a child's needs and a child's sense of time.
Children need physical safety and emotional security if they are to reach their full potential. This means they must be emotionally and legally connected and attached to a caring, nurturing family. And, children need this at the earliest possible time.
Therefore, workers must act to achieve the outcomes of safety, permanency, and well-being based on a child's sense of time, which is far more urgent and "near term" than an adult's sense of time.
Workers must understand that the achievement of safety, permanency, and well-being for children is expected to occur preferably within 12 months for intact families and reunification cases and 24 months for cases moving toward guardianship and adoption after initiation of Department services. This is a guideline recommended by Best Practice and not a strict timeframe. Individual case situations will determine goal achievement.
The system of care has four primary characteristics.
First, the system is community-based to reflect that children and families are served best when served in or near their home community, and, therefore, do not suffer harm to their key connections and relationships.
Second, the system is quality driven by the standards of the Council on Accreditation of Services to Families and Children, and recognized principles and methods of child welfare practice.
Third, the system is outcome based, it sets negotiated, standardized benchmarks for practice and measures outcomes through performance based contracting. The benchmarks and measures are based on federal outcomes, Department mandates and best practice.
Fourth, the system is accountable to our clients, to the communities we serve, and to other stakeholders such as the legislature, the media, and the general public.
An effective, community-based system of child welfare service requires that there be well-defined, quality partnerships with and across various key participants in the system of care. Following is a concise description of these key participants and partners.
A Child and Adolescent Local Area Network (C&A LAN) is a geographically defined area within the state which provides a platform for collaborative planning and has a voluntary, inclusive membership of child welfare stakeholders and a formally convened Steering Committee.
The LAN'S Steering committee needs to relect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the geographic area and is comprised primarily of individuals who reside in the LAN's geographic area. Locally-based State and community family and child-serving agencies/individuals, mental health, education, juvenile justice, foster parents, and parents/families served by State agencies should all be represented on the LAN's Steering Committee.
The goal of LAN development is to establish an organized and comprehensive system of care, planned, developed and delivered at the community level in partnership with the State. The system of care is firmly grounded in a philosophy of service that is child-centered, family-focused and community-based.
Each Department field office works with and through one or more LANs to promote the delivery of community-based services to children and families.
Caregivers such as relatives and licensed foster parents provide the "backbone" of the foster care system by their willingness and ability to care for children who must be placed for safety reasons outside their own family home.
Additionally, many caregivers become permanent families for children through adoption or subsidized guardianship when reunification of a child with her/his family is determined to not be in a child's best interest.
Law enforcement officers are an essential part of the community child protection system. It is frequently a law enforcement officer who first encounters a child who may be abused, neglected or dependent. Thus, they serve a critical "case finding" role.
Officers are also authorized under Illinois law to take children into protective custody. They also provide an exceptional resource related to investigation of allegations of abuse or neglect.
Finally, officers provide a very necessary service in protecting Department workers who may be required to conduct their work in threatening environments.
Although any adult person, any agency or association by its representative may file a petition, the State's Attorney, as the chief law enforcement officer in a county, is responsible for representing the people of the State of Illinois in presenting the case to the court to invoke the court's authority to intervene in a child's and family's life. A positive relationship with the State's attorney and her/his assistants is essential to assuring children's safety and achieving permanency for the child in a timely manner.
Judges who conduct juvenile and adoption legal proceedings represent the ultimate source of authority in a community-based child welfare system. It is the exercise of authority by judges that frequently determines the outcomes of cases in which a child has been placed in foster care. It is a judge who decides whether a child needs foster care, whether a child should be safely reunified, or whether an alternative permanency placement is in a child's best interest.
Participants in a court proceeding will have attorneys representing them: an attorney for the parent(s) who is frequently a court appointed public defender and an attorney appointed by the court to be a child's guardian ad litem.
It is essential that as workers develop and work with the Child and Family Team, they also work with the parent's and child's attorneys. Such work must be coordinated with and by the Assistant State's Attorney assigned to the case.
Several cities or counties in the State now have Child Advocacy Centers (CACs). The purpose of Child Advocacy Centers is to serve as a focal point of coordination between the Department, local law enforcement agencies, and the courts for investigation of reports of serious physical and/or sexual abuse of a child. The Child Advocacy Centers also coordinate access to treatment services for children who have been maltreated.
Frequently a comprehensive family service plan for a family will involve services from one or more providers. The worker's role is to coordinate the family's access to and use of the services and also to coordinate with and between service providers. Therefore, workers must strive to develop a positive working relationship with all persons who are providing services to a family and/or child.
Providers of service include persons such as but not limited to: counselors, homemaker service providers, day care providers, therapists, etc.
For children, providers also should be understood to include teachers and educational personnel, and physicians and other health care providers.
In summary, a worker must understand that an effective community system of child protection and welfare requires multiple participants - all of whom must be viewed as essential partners with whom workers must develop and maintain an effective, positive relationship.
The Department's services and interventions are organized into two major programs. Following is a concise description of each.
The Child Protective Services (CPS) Program consists of intake and investigations, including: receiving and investigating reports of suspected abuse or neglect made to the State Central Registry (SCR); receiving and responding to requests for child welfare services for families in which a child may be at risk of abuse, neglect or dependency; and the provision of short-term services as determined to be necessary to assure a child's safety.
The ultimate purpose of intake/investigation is to ensure the safety of children, to determine initially whether a family is eligible for and needs services, and, if so, to provide services which are necessary to assure the safety of the child.
The second major program of the Department is its Permanency Program for children in intact families and those placed outside their home for safety reasons. The Permanency Program has six major components in the following order of preference:
· intact family services are intended to assist families develop the ability to care safely for their children when it has been determined that a child does not need to be placed outside their family in order to assure the child's safety;
· safe reunification of children with their own family (unless conditions requiring expedited termination of parental rights exist);
· adoption by an alternative family, with or without a financial subsidy, when safe reunification is not possible;
· private guardianship, with or without a financial subsidy, by an alternative adult and family when a child cannot be reunified and adoption has been ruled out; and
· preparation for independent living for youth for whom an alternative permanency arrangement cannot be achieved.
· substitute care when a home environment is not appropriate for those children who have an extreme or complicated physical or mental disability as diagnosed by a physician and/or psychiatrist and when reunification is not possible and adoption and guardianship have been ruled out.
The permanency program recommends achieving permanency for a child no later than 24 months after a child enters foster care. This means the child will be living with a family which has committed emotionally and legally to protect and nurture a child within two years of initiation of service.
A critical element of permanency services is attention by the worker and Child and Family Team to the well-being of children throughout the duration of services. This means tending continuously to a child's health needs, developmental needs, educational needs, and emotional and psychological needs. The worker must always keep in mind that a child's health and safety is always paramount.
The Family Centered Services (FCS) initiative began in FY 94 with the passage of the federal Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Act. It is part of the state's plan for overall reform of the child welfare system in Illinois. The goals of that effort are to:
· reduce reliance on care outside the home or community;
· reduce the social isolation of families through formal and informal links to community institutions; and
· expedite the achievement of permanency for children by reuniting them with their families or developing new permanent living arrangements.
The basic organizational and planning units for this reform effort are the 62 Child and Adolescent LANs.
All LANs are offered annual FCS service grants through DCFS. Their goal is to help children grow up in safe and stable environments. A blend of preservation, support, and permanency services are used to reach this objective. Support services like Healthy Families America are preventive in nature and directed toward a general population, such as all young parents in a community. Preservation services help stabilize troubled families in times of risk, crisis, or other special need. Permanency services reduce the time children spend in foster care by reunifying the families or developing new permanent living arrangements for children. All three services build on family and individual strengths. All are planned and provided at the local level. State agencies which fund or regulate such services have agreed to structure their policy and practice to help assure such efforts' success.
DCFS provides administrative support for the FCS initiative in Illinois. The initiative was originally funded for five years under Title IV-B of the Social Security Act. The estimated federal funding targeted for Illinois for those five years was $30 million. In late 1997, Congress reauthorized the initiative for an additional two years. Illinois is expected to receive $10 million in FCS funds in each of those years. In 2002 Congress reauthorized, for 3 more years, 15 million dollars a year.
In conclusion, all Department services to children and families must be driven and guided by the child's need for safety, permanency, and well-being and the family's need for assistance. The duration of a family's participation in the child protection and/or permanency programs is based on and must be responsive to the child's sense of time and the child's need for safety, permanency, and well-being.
The Department's programs are composed of an array of services. Services are organized into three major types:
· services provided directly by the worker (e.g., casework counseling, mentoring, advocacy, etc.);
· services purchased by the Department; and
· services arranged by the Department but paid for by some other source.
The worker is the primary therapeutic agent of change and a source of direct service provision to a family and child. Key service activities completed by the worker include, but are not limited to:
· continuously assessing and assuring a child's safety;
· counseling families on basic matters of parenting, household management, etc.;
· coordinating and managing a family's access to and use of needed services;
· assisting families to solve problems and to make important decisions; and
· advocating with or on behalf of a family, as necessary.
Many services purchased by the Department or arranged by the Department can be used by a family or child to accomplish child protection and/or permanency purposes depending upon the needs of the family or child.
The services most commonly purchased by the Department are:
· counseling services to restore a person to an acceptable level of functioning;
· child care (i.e., day care) services to provide safe, developmental care for a child, to provide opportunities for parents or caregivers to receive additional information about the child's needs; and/or to provide respite from caregiving responsibilities for the caregiver;
· housing assistance services to provide cash and other supportive services to assist a family access and maintain adequate housing (also referred to as Norman services);
· mental health treatment/therapy to restore a person with a diagnosed mental illness to an acceptable level of functioning;
· sexual abuse treatment services;
· parenting education/training to assist a parent develop effective, safe parenting techniques;
· homemaker services to assist parents/families to develop and maintain basic household management skills essential to a child's safety, health, and well-being;
· advocacy services which are similar to "Big Brother-Big Sister" services and are intended to provide a child and/or a parent with a continuous helping relationship;
· transportation services which are intended to provide assistance to a parent and/or child to access needed services and/or to participate in essential service activities such as court hearings, case reviews, parent-child visits, etc.;
· foster care services with relatives or licensed foster parents which are intended to provide a child who cannot live with her/his family with a safe, nurturing family-like setting;
· adoption services for children who cannot be reunified with their families;
· subsidized guardianship services for children who cannot be reunified with their family and for whom adoption is ruled out;
· residential care (group home or institution) for youth who need intensive, specialized treatment for a serious emotional disturbance or a complex, severe, developmental or health problem; and
· wrap around services for youth who are at risk of needing and/or who are actually admitted to residential care and their families which are intended to maintain such children in their home community or to return such children to their home community.
Services that are most commonly arranged by the Department but for which other sources pay include:
· access to food and clothing through community-based agencies;
· health care services for children for whom the Department is legally responsible, including primary care, specialized treatment, dental care, optometric care, and inpatient hospital medical and psychiatric care. Such services are paid through the Illinois Medicaid program, SSI trust funds or the Department;
· education services, including but not limited to pre-school services and special education services, which are paid for by local educational agencies (LEAs);
· alcohol and other drug abuse assessment and treatment services which are provided for Department clients and paid for by the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS) through grants and/or Medicaid funding available to DHS certified and licensed community-based alcohol and other drug abuse treatment providers;
· sexual abuse victim services provided through Child Advocacy Centers;
· domestic violence treatment services provided by community-based domestic violence service providers;
· mental health services funded by the DHS through grants to community mental health agencies; and
· rehabilitation services for persons with a disability funded by the DHS.
In summary, workers and the children and families they serve have access to a broad array of community-based services to assist children and their parents to meet their needs and to correct the conditions and/or conduct which are threatening a child's safety, permanency, and well-being.
The Illinois child welfare system is outcome driven by a child's need for safety, permanency, and well-being, and within a child's sense of time. A child's health and safety are always the paramount concern.
The system is community-based, quality-driven, and accountable to clients, community partners, and other stakeholders.
The system reflects that an effective system of care requires the active participation of many different professionals working as a team with and/or on behalf of children and their families.
And, finally, the system reflects that families and children need timely access to a broad range of services to assist the family care safely for its children.
1.1.1 The Legal Context for Child Welfare Services in Illinois | 1.1.2 Mission and Purpose of the Department of Children and Family Services | 1.1.3 Assumptions Governing Intervention | 1.1.4 System of Care Delivery of Service | 1.1.5 Programs | 1.1.6 Services | 1.1.7 Summary Regarding the System of Care