The Chicago Tribune reported on a recent agreement between the ACLU of Illinois and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services that will add more than 100 investigator positions to help ease the caseload of DCFS workers. The ACLU of Illinois represents all children in the Illinois foster care system under a 1991 federal consent decree, and is proud to fight to protect the rights of the most vulnerable among us.
“Conditions inside DCFS had reached a tipping point,” said Benjamin Wolf, associate legal director of the ACLU of Illinois. “Recent budget cuts, combined with a degradation of frontline services over the past years, threaten to wipe out important gains made in reforming the system in the past two decades. The plan presented in court … is an important step toward reversing that trend.”