* Center Square…

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services took a verbal lashing Tuesday from the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules Tuesday for how the agency has proposed rules regulating day care operations.

Over the summer, the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules suspended a DCFS rule limiting how long day care assistants can monitor rooms of children under 2 years old. The rule restricted assistants from monitoring rooms for no more than 90 minutes upon opening and [then 90 minutes upon] closing. That was modified from three hours upon opening and closing the agency allowed during the pandemic.

The bipartisan JCAR called for more information after being told there were hundreds of founded complaints filed against child care centers over this issue.

DCFS Deputy Director of Licensing Shontée Blankenship told JCAR in July the department has received more than 300 complaints about the issue since 2019. More than 290 were substantiated, she said.

“These numbers clearly show that leaving an assistant alone without a qualified teacher is a safety concern that cannot be ignored,” Blankenship said.

A public records request filed by The Center Square found of a total of 305 complaints filed between Jan. 1, 2019, and July 11, 2023, and there were only 52 substantiated complaints.

State Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, said the committee was misled.

“These are two completely different pictures and information that was provided to this committee to justify why you are trying to enforce this rule,” Rezin said Tuesday.

State Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, said DCFS is a “national embarrassment.”

“We don’t come to you. I’ll never come to you for anything. You will need me before I need you. You will need this committee before we need you and this is a bipartisan disdain for your department,” Tarver said.

* I don’t know how DCFS allowed this to get so out of hand, but JCAR members appear to be operating under a false assumption. Here’s the above-mentioned FOIA reply…

What Center Square didn’t count were “corrected” complaints. Corrected complaints are defined as substantiated claims which were then corrected, the Pritzker administration explained to me when I bothered to ask.

I mean, it just made sense when I first looked at it. How could a complaint about a suspected violation be corrected if it wasn’t first substantiated? Seems simple enough.

So, the reality is that 292 complaints about unlicensed teaching assistants were substantiated, and then after DCFS found problems, 240 of those were corrected. Substantiated, in this context, means that childcare providers got called out and didn’t do anything about it.

* Some legislators are upset because they don’t believe that all childcare groups were adequately consulted and some are opposed to essentially returning to pre-pandemic regulations because childcare centers are having a difficult time recruiting licensed professionals and parents can’t find care. Some are also angry that DCFS headed off recent legislation to deal with the topic of unlicensed assistants. And some legislators are threatening to kick DCFS out of the childcare industry, which, I have to admit, probably isn’t a horrible idea since the agency has other, more pressing responsibilities that it obviously isn’t great at dealing with.

All of those complaints have validity. But the bottom line is, if a child somehow comes to harm because an unlicensed, 18-year-old childcare assistant messes up while no licensed adult is around, I guarantee you’re gonna hear an earful about DCFS from other legislators.

Work it out.

       

15 Comments - WK - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 10:40 am: Did you bother to watch the hearing? Most of the disdain against DCFS was about the agency completely misrepresenting who and what organizations agreed to the rule. As well as the attitude the DCFs staff presented, and the fact that they brought almost none of the data requested from the last meeting, and then tried to act like they were never asked. - Rich Miller - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 10:41 am: ===Did you bother to watch the hearing?=== Yep. That’s mostly mentioned above. And as far as attitude goes, the legislators definitely seemed to overreact to some things. - Perrid - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 10:43 am: The sheer, unadulterated ego is breath taking. Sadly not surprising, but breath taking: “We don’t come to you. I’ll never come to you for anything. You will need me before I need you. You will need this committee before we need you and this is a bipartisan disdain for your department,” This is an embarrassing quote, and I bet he feels proud of himself for mistaking being a jerk with being “tough” - Laura - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 10:49 am: DGCFS seems shattered. Most JCAR members are middle of the road and very easy going. If they can’t work with JCAR, I’m not sure they can work with anybody. It’s definitely not good for any agency when a JCAR meeting creates news stories and gets on this blog. - WK - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 10:52 am: = This is an embarrassing quote…= I would kindly suggest you watch the hearing. Makes a whole lot more sense in context. - Oswego Willy - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 10:58 am: - WK - Rudeness in context? You may need to explain your context. So there was no seemingly overreacting to things? - Candy Dogood - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 11:17 am: None of this seems really presidential. Governor Pritzker out there creating dark money groups while his agencies are run into the ground by incompetent and dishonest appointees. - Norseman - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 11:22 am: Legislators, especially the MAGA GOP, love to attack regulators when they get complaints from constituents. Bombastic is the term that comes to mind when they address the agencies. They also love to blame the agencies rightly or wrongly when something bad happens. Questions a regulator needs to answer are: does the data demonstrate a problem; how does this affect the safety of protected entities; is the rule consistent with national or industry standards; and, are there other options to addressing the safety issues. Needless to say, it’s important to discuss with the industry. The case at hand relates to a subject I have some experience. My granddaughter has been bitten and done the biting and fallen at a daycare. It goes with the territory. Thankfully, her daycare seems to be well staffed. It’s also very expensive. A problem for a lot of parents who go to lower cost options that are not so diligent with respect to safety. The chest pounding solons need to think about the purpose of the regulation and not simply hate regulations because their regulations. - Donnie Elgin - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 11:34 am: “Legislators, especially the MAGA GOP, love to attack regulators” Tarver was the most vocal - hardly MAGA. - Candy Dogood - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 12:00 pm: ===They also love to blame the agencies rightly or wrongly when something bad happens.=== Or — hear me out on this — maybe they’re just tired of what certainly seems like a lack of progress on addressing issues at DCFS. I’ll never be in line to be an agency director, especially not at DCFS, but I’d do whatever it took to have every vacancy filled in my first 6 months. - Jane - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 12:14 pm: “But the bottom line is, if a child somehow comes to harm because an unlicensed, 18-year-old childcare assistant messes up while no licensed adult is around, I guarantee you’re gonna hear an earful about DCFS from other legislators.” Is the purpose of the college degree requirement just to ensure that teachers are at least 20 years old? If so, why not set an age requirement? Or do you believe that taking 2 years of college makes one more morally worthy and therefore less likely to be caught mistreating kids? It is also not at all clear to me that the complaints prove there is a safety concern. Perhaps the text of this post just needs clarifying, but if some number of complaints were just that there was not a head teacher in the room, then it is not evidence that missing a head teacher is unsafe. - WK - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 12:24 pm: = So there was no seemingly overreacting to things?= Again, I would suggest watching the hearing. It’s online. But to explain more, DCFS and its lack of progress in fixing issues has many lawmakers rightfully upset. They aren’t in a great position with the legislature right now. However, they have put in some work to make their relationship with JCAR extra contentious. At the least, listening to Tarver’s full comments would be enlightening. His quote came at the end of describing what he felt were very dishonest and disingenuous actions and words from DCFS. - Oswego Willy - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 12:29 pm: === Again=== My question was to your thought. - WK - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 2:45 pm: = My question was to your thought.= Given the context, which would include the interactions between agency and lawmakers that day, issues dealing with the agency prior for them, and the general mess that DCFS is, I would say I didn’t see it as overreacting from my point of view. It’s not often that the contempt is so bipartisan, which I think demonstrates the situation at hand. - WK - Thursday, Oct 19, 23 @ 2:50 pm: To put it in a nutshell: At the previous hearing, lawmakers asked for certain things, including info, as well as an agreement with stakeholders (lawmakers made it clear that stakeholders included daycares and their associations) on the rule. DCFS officials ran out the clock, then called lawmakers and said they had an agreement with stakeholders (which they clearly did not). Then at the hearing, DCFS showed up without the info that was requested, and claimed that weren’t asked at the last hearing. According to the lawmakers, this was typical for their dealings with the agency. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.