Letter to the editor by Benjamin S. Wolf, Director, Children`s and Institutionalized Persons Project, ACLU of Illinois, as run in the Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, July 10, 1991.
SOME FAMILIES NEEDLESSLY SHATTERED
Mike Royko`s column of June 18 points up one of the terrible breakdowns in the operation of the Department of Children and Family Services that we hope our three-year-old federal lawsuit (B.H. v. Suter) will help to correct. Unfortunately, we have all too often seen tragedies like the one Royko describes of children removed from their parents` custody because of abuse or serious neglect and then later sent back into the same dangerous conditions (or worse) by the system that is supposed to protect them.
Incredibly, there is another side which often is at least as bad and is rarely reported by the media. Those are the tragic situations in which children are needlessly removed from their homes or not reunited with their families when more appropriate, less expensive services would keep the family together.
One mother I met recently, for example, left her young children alone in their apartment so that she could buy some food and pay a utility bill. Although the children otherwise appeared healthy and well cared for, DCFS took immediate custody and sent the children to a series of shelters and foster homes.
It unquestionably was neglectful of this mother to leave young children alone, even only for a short time. But mental health professionals who evaluated this family were convinced that the children would have been much better off left with their mother, perhaps with a few hours of day care provided so she could run her errands, rather than spending years in the fear and loneliness of much of our foster care system.
Both these situations occur largely because DCFS case workers are incredibly overloaded with cases and are poorly trained and supervised.
The cases that grab headlines and the attention of columnists are of course the ones in which the unrehabilitated parent regains custody only to inflict injury again.
But by not telling about the often silent suffering of perhaps thousands of children who could be reunited with their families with just a little bit of help, we all reinforce an atmosphere in which case workers will be forced needlessly to shatter families contrary to the best interests of the children.