The ACLU of Illinois' work to improve conditions for foster children under the care of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) is highlighted in an article from the Associated Press (via the Rockford Register Star). Last week, a report was released outlining necessary improvements to be accomplished by the department in order to remain compliant under a decades-long consent decree overseen by the ACLU of Illinois. The article quotes ACLU of Illinois Associate Legal Director Ben Wolf:

"This report is a clarion call for change, real change within DCFS," said Benjamin Wolf, the associate legal director of the group.

The report said high turnover in recent years in the director's office also hampered the reform process: "Even very basic functions, such as ... case management, grind to a halt ... until the workforce learns of the priorities of a new director."

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Current Illinois law allows doctors, nurses and other health care providers to deny care and even information to their patients if the providers feels doing so goes against their personal religious beliefs. The State Journal-Register spoke with Angela Valavanis, who has been affected by this law when she was denied a tubal ligation during a c-section operation because she was at a Catholic hospital. The ACLU of Illinois is advocating for the passage of a bill - Senate Bill 1564 - currently before the Illinois House that would amend the law so that health care providers must make sure their patients are given full information about their options. The State Journal-Register also spoke with ACLU of Illinois Executive Director Colleen Connell:

Patients and their families often are oblivious when it comes to the ways faith-based guidelines can influence health care, said Colleen Connell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

“We, as patients, don’t know what we don’t know,” she said. “The time to tell someone … is before you’re in an emergency situation."

Experiences such as those recounted by Valavanis and others over the years prompted the ACLU and others to seek a legislative solution, Connell said.

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Learn more about the initiative to Put Patient's First.
Hear more about Angela's story.

As the public responds to the dashcam video documenting the traffic stop and arrest of Sandra Bland, an Illinois native who subsequently died in a jail cell three days later, many questions about the stop have been raised. The ACLU of Illinois has studied traffic stop data over the years and has found there to be significant racial disparities in the traffic stops and searches by police in Illinois. The Southern Illinoisan published an article about the Sandra Bland case and spoke with ACLU of Illinois Communications and Public Policy Director Ed Yohnka:

“What I would say is I don’t know that we know everything about this stop," Ed Yohnka, ACLU spokesman, said. "There is a video out there ... I think that we ought to be careful in not drawing too many conclusions from it."

He noted that the ACLU had actually identified that Texas county as one with a disproportionate number of traffic stops for minority motorists and for marijuana drug arrests. "There is just this whole issue of what motivates and what justifies these stops in the first instance," Yohnka said.

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