Illinois Families Now and Forever

              2004 • Volume 6 Holiday • Edition
FAMILIES
Now and
Forever
Department of Children and Family Services©
ILLINOIS
Families by Foster Care, Adoption and Guardianship
Bryan Samuels
From the
DCFS
Director
I recently announced a new ap-proach
to the way DCFS will deliver
services, looking at the lifetime
needs of the child. We may hope,
but can no longer assume, that a
child’s stay in care will be short.
Thus, we have to make sure
children don’t miss out on valuable
development while they are in our
care. We must give youth the tools
they will need for a lifetime of
success in families and on their own.
There are many changes underway
and more to come. DCFS is
lowering caseloads to devote more
resources to each family. New
Integrated Assessment procedures
will better identify needs on the
front end. We are streamlining the
decision making process for
delivering services. There will be
more resources for youth dealing
with trauma and new means to
stabilize youth with multiple
placement disruptions or time
spent “on-run.” We redesigned
transitional and independent living
programs to serve youth leaving
care. We also hope to cultivate a
group of foster parents devoted to
helping older youth transition to
adulthood while they live in a family
setting.
We are being asked to do more with
less, and are making changes to rise
to the challenge.
This fall, DCFS became the first
state child welfare agency in the
country to be re-accredited. This
achievement comes just four
years after achieving the
distinction of being the largest
agency to gain initial accred-itation.
The accreditation shows
that the agency has met the
highest national standards for
child welfare practice and delivers
services effectively. The Council
on Accreditation for Children and
Family Services (COA) conducts
thorough reviews of child welfare
agencies around the nation.
Illinois took the regular standards
even higher and invited the COA
review teams to conduct three-day
studies of each local office
along with the traditional central
office reviews. In the past year,
accreditation standards were
raised to place more emphasis on
monitoring service quality. DCFS
workers met the more stringent
guidelines while maintaining full
caseloads.
“Today’s re-accreditation sends
the message that, even in difficult
times, child welfare agencies can
DCFS first agency to earn
second “stamp of approval”
boost the quality of services,” said
DCFS Director Bryan Samuels.
Private agencies that contract
with DCFS for foster care services
must also be accredited. Due to
the rigorous demands of the
accreditation process, clients
should expect high standards of
service along with increased
participation in decision-making,
better case management and
more accountability.
The accreditation process in-cluded
interviews with random-ly-
selected foster parents and
caregivers. However, it is just
one of many means that foster
parents can use to weigh in with
their own “performance meas-urements.”
Illinois is also unique
in having the Foster Parent Law
that contains the Foster Parent
Bill of Rights, which requires all
agencies to seek foster parent
input into their annual Foster
Parent Law Implementation
Plans. Additionally, DCFS main-tains
the Advocacy Office for
Children and Families and a
phone line (800-232-3798) to
hear and resolve problems.
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