-
In a progress report compiled by DCFS for fiscal year 2023, the agency noted that “unprecedented staff turnover impacts the accuracy, comprehensiveness, and consistency of ongoing assessments of risk and safety.”
-
Heidi Mueller, who has served as director of the Illinois Dept. of Juvenile Justice since 2016, was selected after a national search. She will take the reins of the scandal-plagued agency beginning February 1.
-
The department’s budget is growing as new leadership is being recruited. Advocates hope those changes signal more improvements to come.
-
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.
-
The state of Illinois needs child welfare workers. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services looked to fill at least 50 child welfare and case investigator positions on Monday during an on-the-spot job fair in Bloomington.
-
A Bloomington attorney is helping parents who lost their children to state protective services based on false allegations. Alan Novick says the road to exoneration is long and costly.
-
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.