By Dave Savini and Michele Youngerman
CHICAGO (CBS) — For years CBS 2 has been telling you about younger kids – our most susceptible within the little one welfare system – being left in psychiatric hospitals lengthy after they’re prepared for discharge.
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Different kids housed in shelters as an alternative of correct placements.
Now we’re seeing accountability. In a surprising transfer, a Cook dinner County Juvenile Court docket choose issued two contempt of courtroom orders towards Illinois Division of Kids and Household Companies (DCFS) Director Marc Smith for violating the rights of two kids left languishing in amenities for months. DCFS may quickly be fined as a lot as $2,000 a day till these kids are correctly positioned.
We interviewed Marc Smith final March about points in regards to the care of youngsters in DCFS care, throughout which he stated, “We’re chargeable for the care and nicely being of youngsters who’re being abused and uncared for within the state of Illinois.”
“And for me, there may be nothing extra necessary than ensuring that our system is accountable for the work that we do,” Smith continued.
The CBS 2 Investigators have discovered Smith is now the one accused of an absence of accountability.
Cook dinner County Public Guardian Charles Golbert stated he’s by no means seen this occur.
“A choose in juvenile courtroom in two circumstances – two unrelated circumstances – held the DCFS director Marc Smith in contempt of courtroom for violating a number of courtroom orders to position two kids,” stated Golbert.
(Credit score: CBS 2)
The courtroom order describes how a 9-year-old woman suffered years of bodily and sexual abuse at dwelling. Then after getting into DCFS care, she was put right into a psychiatric hospital. She was medically able to be discharged again in June 2021, however she’s nonetheless hospitalized.
A choose wrote DCFS disobeyed quite a few courtroom orders to get the kid out of the hospital in October and November. That is why DCFS Director Smith is being held in contempt.
The woman has been confined within the psychiatric hospital for 221 days because the date she was alleged to be discharged.
“I’ve seen judges threaten to carry DCFS in contempt of courtroom many occasions,” stated Golbert. “I’ve been working in juvenile courtroom for greater than 30 years. I can not recall a single case the place a choose really held the DCFS director in contempt of courtroom.”
The opposite contempt order was issued after a 13-year-old boy in DCFS care was pressured to sleep in a storage room.
(Credit score: CBS 2)
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“He was sleeping on the ground of a utility room in an workplace,” stated Golbert. “Closet of an workplace.”
That little one was then despatched to a downstate shelter and has been caught there for 145 days – the explanation for Smith’s different contempt cost.
“The reality is is that our coronary heart breaks every single day on this system,” stated Marc Smith final March.
We interviewed him then after the CBS 2 Investigators uncovered how one other little one, a 10-year-old woman, had been trafficked out of the Grand Motel in Chicago.
DCFS had obtained repeated complaints concerning her courting again a number of years. At the very least 5 males had sexually assaulted her because the age of seven and she or he suffered different abuse. DCFS did not put her in protecting custody till her ultimate rape case on the Grand Motel in October of 2020.
Smith wouldn’t speak about how his division dealt with her case. We discovered that after DCFS did lastly step in, they saved the woman locked in a psychiatric hospital 39 days longer than mandatory. And it took 154 days for DCFS to get her into an acceptable placement.
“I can’t communicate to any particular person case,” stated Smith.
It wasn’t till after our tales that the woman was transferred.
Golbert stated it took media motion to get the woman correctly positioned.
The 2 new contempt circumstances additionally name for sanctions – fines of $1,000 a day, per little one, for every single day the 9-year-old and 13-year-old should not correctly positioned.
Golbert says taxpayers pay no less than $6 million a 12 months to cowl these inappropriate placements for kids. Within the 13 12 months previous’s case, getting him positioned the place he’s alleged to be would value about $1,700 a month. The shelter he’s been confined in prices greater than 5 occasions that at $9,715 a month.
“We at all times need to do what’s greatest for the youngsters that we’re serving,” Smith beforehand stated. “Lately has been an elimination of a excessive variety of beds, however we’ve additionally within the final couple of years, actually labored at not solely growing these numbers and rebuilding the availability of beds that we want.”
About 500 residential and group dwelling beds had been eradicated. With all these locations to reside now gone, kids find yourself languishing in psychiatric hospitals and shelters. It’s an issue Smith inherited when he was chosen to steer the division in 2019
Golbert says eliminating all these placements put the system in a multitude, “This technique has been in shambles for the final seven years since then”.
DCFS plans to attraction the courtroom orders.
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DCFS Assertion:
“The Division of Kids and Household Companies is devoted to protecting kids protected and strengthening households. We’re working aggressively addressing the decades-long problem of an absence of group sources and amenities for kids with complicated behavioral well being wants, which has been exacerbated by an elevated demand in social companies lately. Each single day, DCFS works with its community of suppliers and foster mother and father in an ongoing effort to position these kids in settings that may present the suitable stage of care and by which the kids can develop and flourish.”
