DCFS Smacked Again in Auditor General Report
The DCFS office in Springfield.
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A new audit of the much maligned Department of Children of Family Services (DCFS) shows the agency failed to report cases of child abuse and neglect to authorities and schools, sometimes for years.
The Auditor General report released Tuesday shows the agency failed to immediately report investigations of child abuse, the death or serious injury of a child, torture, malnutrition, and sexual abuse to state’s attorney’s offices within the mandated 24-hour time frame.
The Auditor General says, in some cases, the reports weren’t made to proper authorities for between 5 and 43 days. 20% of reports studied were not submitted to prosecutors in time.
The Auditor General found a case of abuse or neglect that left the child hospitalized for more than a month, wasn’t sent to prosecutors for 885 days, almost two-and-a-half years.
Furthermore, the Auditor General says the issues have been ongoing since 2012.
DCFS is also alleged to have failed to communicate cases of child sexual abuse to schools 96% of the time. Some of the notifications took between 431 to 908 days to report to the school.
“This is astonishing,” said one lawmaker who asked not to be identified. “We’re giving DCFS $2 billion dollars this year to improve this mess of an agency and what gives you faith they’ll clean this up? And the Pritzker administration seems completely uninterested in taking any responsibility for the disaster.”
DCFS responded to our story Wednesday:
DCFS is committed to compliance with the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act and in every case, did report and comply in every instance as dictated by statue. As noted throughout the report, in some cases statute indicates that DCFS file reports with other entities, such as law enforcement, within a “reasonable timeframe.” Recognizing that this is vague, DCFS has given itself a self-imposed corrective action item to define the parameters of this timeframe which will be automated pending the launch of IllinoisConnect later this year.
As it relates to the compliance of the School Code, DCFS leadership has provided clarification on how to execute this procedure.
Regarding the monitoring of provider agencies, it is worth noting that during the timeframe of this audit, 2020 -2022, the world faced a global pandemic and despite the reduced workforce, DCFS continued to deliver exceptional services and programs to the children and families of Illinois during these unprecedented times. The department has added regional leadership roles to increase oversight after facing staffing shortages and pursuing a ew performance monitoring tool to aid in tracking and documentation of monitoring agency contracts.
House Republican Leader Tony McCombie (R-Savana) issued a statement Wednesday critical of the handling of the agency.
“Under this DCFS administration, children continue to be at risk and workers are still not safe,” she said. “Protecting children in the state’s care should be the most important job we have. Unfortunately, children continue to suffer due to perpetual mismanagement by this agency. Billions of dollars have not fixed the problems; the agency needs to take into account the common-sense proposals pushed by House Republican lawmakers, to give this the attention it demands.”
The report comes at a time that two former DCFS agents from McHenry County face charges of endangering the life of a child and reckless conduct for their handling of the AJ Freund case. Freund, a five-year-old boy, was killed by his parents in 2019 just a few months after the agents allowed the boy to return to the care of his mother.