Metro East Sun

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) is under fire as several state lawmakers, such as Rep. Avery Bourne (R-Litchifield), are calling it out for its mishandling of cases. 

“This is the seventh contempt of court for DCFS Director Marc Smith in just 10 weeks,” Bourne wrote on Facebook. “He allowed a boy with special needs to live in a temporary shelter for over a year, even after a court demanded the child be placed in a home. The courts were forced to intervene because the Pritzker Administration neglected DCFS for too long.”

CBS News reported the Public Guardian’s Office said the most recent citation focuses on a 16-year-old boy who has spent more than 375 days — almost the whole time he has been in DCFS custody — in a shelter that does not have the resources to support his needs given his intellectual and cognitive disabilities.

Rep. Deanne Mazzochi (R-Westmont) and other Republicans want changes made within the organization.

“It was bad enough that DCFS had to receive prior court orders in connection with many of these children who are being held in impossible situations, but a contempt citation means that court orders were ignored repeatedly, chronically,” Mazzochi said. “That the court believes that there was no other choice to get these kids some relief and that is not acceptable.”

Rep. Chris Bos (R-Lake Zurich) is demanding answers too, in light of a teen girl who had been moved 24 times since Nov. 18, after she’d spent two months in a locked ward in a hospital.

“The stories that we hear and the failures at all levels, there continues to be resistance to change,”  Rep. Tom Weber (R-Fox Lake) said to The Center Square. “No state agency is above reproach or oversight, especially not an agency that is tasked with taking care of our children.”