…Adding… From DCFS…

DCFS meets and exceeds its duty under the law to report on tragic cases both through rigorous reviews and publications managed by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and through the work of its Child Death Review Teams (CDRTs). These independent entities analyze child deaths and serious injuries, ensuring accountability and systemic improvements while respecting the confidentiality required in child welfare cases. In addition, the OIG’s Annual Reports—including child death reviews—are reported to the General Assembly annually and posted publicly on the department’s website.

* Peter Nickeas at the Illinois Answers Project…

The state agency responsible for keeping Illinois’ most vulnerable children safe has failed to produce legally required public reports after examining what went wrong in hundreds of cases of child deaths and thousands of serious injuries, the Illinois Answers Project has learned.

More than 1,200 deaths and more than 3,000 other cases of serious injury have met the criteria for incident-specific reports since July 2018, according to data DCFS provided under an open records request. The case-specific reports are required when a child dies by suspected abuse or neglect, or dies or suffers a serious injury when they are in the state’s care.

The failure spurred blistering criticism from child welfare advocates and prompted the Cook County public guardian to call for an investigation. […]

The reports are required by the state’s Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act, providing the framework for the system of investigating abuse and neglect of children. The portion of the law regarding the reports went into effect in 1997. State lawmakers added language to strengthen the public disclosure of the reports in 2008.

* From Illinois’ Abuse and Neglected Child Reporting Act…

In any case involving the death or near death of a child, when a person responsible for the child has been charged with committing a crime that results in the child’s death or near death, there shall be a presumption that the best interest of the public will be served by public disclosure of certain information concerning the circumstances of the investigations of the death or near death of the child and any other investigations concerning that child or other children living in the same household. […]

No later than 6 months after the date of the death or serious life-threatening injury of the child, the Department shall notify the President of the Senate, the Minority Leader of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, and the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives in whose district the child’s death or serious life-threatening injury occurred upon the completion of each report and shall submit an annual cumulative report to the Governor and the General Assembly incorporating cumulative data about the above reports and including appropriate findings and recommendations. The reports required by this subsection (c) shall be made available to the public after completion or submittal.

* Back to Illinois Answers…

Heather Tarczan, a spokeswoman for DCFS, declined to answer most questions about the death-and-injury reports. It’s not clear when the agency last completed one of the legally required incident-specific reports. An open records request for the agency’s most recent report — whenever it was completed — was denied, with DCFS saying no reports exist. The agency fought in instances for months on releasing any records or acknowledging that the reports don’t exist.

DCFS says it does conduct reviews when deaths or serious injuries happen. But there’s little recourse for the public to learn the results, since state law forbids the release of most child welfare records to protect the privacy of children and families who are investigated or who get help from the state. The reports that DCFS has failed to produce are meant to give public officials insight into what may have gone wrong. […]

And the most recent child death review team annual report covered deaths that occurred five years ago. New reports haven’t been published in years. Tarczan declined to say why, but said the agency had been operating with the “understanding” that these satisfy the death-and-injury reporting required in the law.

Tarczan would not say how the agency came to that understanding.

The Cook County public guardian, Charles Golbert, who is responsible for representing 6,000 children in abuse and neglect cases in juvenile court, has asked the state’s auditor general and DCFS’ inspector general to investigate the agency’s failure to comply with the law.

“These reports, which are required by law, are critical to protect children, and to prevent deaths and serious injuries to children in DCFS care or who are reported to DCFS as abused or neglected,” Golbert wrote in his request for review.

Go read the rest.