The Youth Project wrote about the impact of the state of Illinois' budget crisis on services for foster children under the care of the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS). As Governor Bruce Rauner and Illinois legislators continue to argue over the state's fiscal health, funds for DCFS children face dire straits. For decades, the ACLU of Illinois has monitored DCFS under a consent decree designed to protect the safety and wellbeing of children under the agency's care. The Youth Project spoke with the ACLU of Illinois' associate legal director Ben Wolf about the lack of oversight in addressing problems within the agency:
This lack of communication has spilled over onto direct service providers and even foster homes, making it more difficult to maintain adequate standards of care, Wolf says. “The DCFS data systems are full of data but they aren’t very useful for doing real monitoring and oversight and responding,” he says.