There’s another nightmare child-welfare story in the news.
A Cook County judge has taken extraordinary action by holding the head of the state’s Department of Children and Family Services in contempt of court and imposed a fine of $3,000 per day until his concerns are addressed.
The judge last week held DCFS Director Marc Smith in contempt for failing to place two wards of the state in proper residential settings. On Thursday, he imposed a similar penalty in connection with the case of a third child.
Smith’s failure involves leaving children in mental-health facilities even though they no longer need to be there.
On Jan. 6 and again Thursday, Cook County Circuit Judge Patrick T. Murphy issued contempt citations and fines — $1,000 a day in each of the three cases — for failing to place the children in appropriate facilities. He stayed the fines until Jan. 18 to allow Smith to seek relief in the appellate court.
The judge’s ire is understandable, at least as he explained it. He said Smith “disobeyed numerous court orders” to take corrective action. In Smith’s defense, the agency said it has no proper place to put the children.
This is another one of those sickening situations where the state’s child-protection bureaucracy is failing, for a combination of reasons, in its extremely difficult mission.
These cases are horrible, and the scars these children bear will be severe and permanent.
In one, a 13-year-old boy with reported severe mental-health issues needs to be housed in a therapeutic foster home. In another, a 9-year-old girl suffered sexual and physical abuse in her biological home and, as a consequence, was placed in a psychiatric hospital.
The children have been approved for discharge. But nothing has happened — the girl remains in a mental-health facility, while the boy has been placed in a temporary shelter in Mt. Vernon, far from his residence in Chicago.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration has had little to say about this turn of events. But individual Democrats are speaking up while Republicans are pressing for legislative hearings into the problems at DCFS.
What has happened to these children is a recurring problem.
Reports indicate that DCFS has placed 356 children statewide in inappropriate settings for an average of 55 days, according to Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert.
The judge noted in his court order that in 2020, DCFS had 314 wards in psychiatric hospitals beyond the date of discharge. He wrote that “children cannot get out of psychiatric facilities because children cannot get out of residential facilities, and hence, there is a bottleneck.”
The judge acknowledged that the problem — at least part of it — is the lack of foster homes and group homes.
This kind of tragic situation cannot be allowed to stand.
Unfortunately, it demonstrates once again how elected officials fail to serve the public interest when they continually focus on creating new programs while allowing their fundamental responsibilities to wither on the vine.
There are few more important duties for state officials that to protect the life and health of vulnerable children.
While a contempt citation will draw public attention to the problem, it won’t solve it. Only the governor and legislators can do that.
