Department of Children and Family Services

McLean County’s new Family Treatment Court accepted its first client and received a $750,000 grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to fund operations.

The resignation comes a week after a blistering report from the Illinois auditor general highlighting delays in reporting child abuse to other authorities, protecting children allegedly abused and finding placements for kids.

Child deaths involving the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services increased by 40 percent in the last fiscal year.

McLean County's new state's attorney says she hopes the job will give her a better platform to address child welfare issues. Erika Reynolds has been critical of the how Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has handled abuse allegations.

Each state creates its own definitions of abuse and neglect and sets a threshold for when a child should be removed from a home. Is it time to rethink Illinois' definitions?

Child welfare experts acknowledge that meaningful reform often follows the chaos of dysfunction and years of litigation. Here's how other states and cities have done it.

In Rica Rountree's case, mandated reporters alerted the state’s child welfare agency of potential serious abuse. They sounded the alarm bell repeatedly, only to have those alarms ignored or not thoroughly investigated by the agency tasked with doing so. Instead, the investigator who mishandled Rica’s case was promoted.

Speaking publicly for the first time about what went wrong in Rica Rountree's case, prosecutors Erika Reynolds and Mary Koll spoke with WGLT about the failures that led to the ongoing abuse that caused Rica’s fatal internal injuries.

The state’s child welfare agency had three interactions with Kimberlee Burton before her infant died at home and was reported missing, according to records with the Department of Children and Family Services.

Child welfare officials in Illinois reported a 17 percent decline in the number of child death cases they investigated during the previous fiscal year —…