Report says DCFS should change focus

CHICAGO -- The state's child welfare agency should change its focus to address the needs of older, more troubled youth who stay in the system longer, a report released Monday found.

The 50-page report, commissioned by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to study the successes and failures of the state's Department of Children and Family Services, found the average age of children in custody is about 15. In the mid-90s, the average age was between 9 and 10, the report found.

"Most of the strategies we have in place today really don't anticipate serving a kid for that long. We don't think about the developmental needs of that child," said Bryan Samuels, the new director of DCFS and chairman of the task force that created the report.

Blagojevich, who released the findings and named Samuels to the new post Monday, said the state must find new ways to address the needs of today's child welfare population.

'A tall order'

"This is a tall order, no doubt," Blagojevich said. "But we must move forward to implement these changes. There is nothing more important than the safety and well-being of these children."

He created the seven-member panel, which his wife Patti served on, after recent reports surfaced of abuse and neglect in Chicago and at Maryville Academy, the state's largest facility for treating abandoned and abused children.

Blagojevich said his budget proposal provides $26.2 million to help children with severe emotional and mental health needs and another $13 million to improve training of private agencies that make welfare placement decisions.

Samuels said the department needs to hire more caseworkers and wants it to identify and find all missing and runaway youth. In September 2002, he said the task force found there were 797 children in DCFS custody who were labeled as "whereabouts unknown."

However, Samuels said DCFS created four new categories to classify those children, which reduced the number of children counted as "missing."

Later news reports said only about 200 children were missing, but Samuels said the task force could not verify that number. Instead, the group found that 462 children were missing, as of last month.

"We don't know who was involved and we don't know where the number (200) came from," Samuels said.

The task force also found that about 1,000 children in the state's care this year had been placed in more than 23 different homes. Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy's office sued the state earlier this month to stop the multiple moves of children in foster care.

The group also discovered that black children made up 69 percent of open DCFS cases in 2002, compared with 44 percent nationally.

The task force issued several recommendations. They include making mental health services available to children while they are in DCFS care and after they leave, making services available to parents with substance abuse problems, and establishing a unit to review and monitor missing children's cases.

"The report was clear in identifying many of the serious problems and I hope will give us all some renewed energy to find some creative solutions," said Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, a child welfare watchdog.

Samuels replaces Jess McDonald, who stepped down in March after a highly praised nine-year tenure.

Samuels grew up in Chicago and earned a bachelor's in economics from the University of Notre Dame and a master's in public policy from the University of Chicago.

His widowed mother, who struggled with chemical dependency, turned over the care of her three sons to the Glenwood School for Boys when Samuels was in second grade. He lived there until he graduated from high school, an experience that he said will help him in his new post.

"There's an empathy there and appreciation for challenges that kids are faced with, particularly kids that are raised on the kindness of strangers," Samuels said.