Pritzker's DCFS Excuses are Inexcusable
Governor JB Pritzker speaks at a food pantry in the Metro East Tuesday. (Photo: State of Illinois)
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OPINION
If you read Beth Hundsorfer’s reporting in Capitol News Illinois last week about the failure of DCFS and its contracting agency, Lutheran Child and Family Services, in the death of 18-year-old Mackenzi Felmlee last year, you were likely incensed. I sure was.
She died last year after being beaten, tortured, and likely thrown down the stairs to her eventual death. Her foster mother, Shemeka Williams, and Williams’ mother, Cornelia Reid, have been charged with murder.
We learned in the CNI story that DCFS was withholding the release of more information on Felmlee’s death even though there’s a law on the books requiring DCFS to release findings and recommendations available when a child dies or is seriously injured in its care.
State legislators who represent the area where a DCFS death takes place are also required to be notified. I’m told that hasn’t happened in this case or in many others like it around the state.
Pritzker promised to overhaul the agency all the way back in 2019, in the first months of his administration, and it clearly hasn’t happened. The legislature has thrown tens of millions of dollars at the agency but we still aren’t seeing results.
And kids are literally dying.
An Illinois Answers Project report earlier in the year showed more than 1,200 kids have died in DCFS care since 2018, and another 3,000 have suffered life-threatening injuries.
I asked the Governor about why DCFS was “withholding” the release of information, which is the word used in the title of the CNI story and he accused me of pushing a “right wing talking point” in a response that immediately got defensive.
“We are required when local law enforcement, and I'm talking specifically now about the state's attorney's office there. When we're asked by the prosecutors not to reveal, not to interfere, we have to do that,” Pritzker said. “Obviously we're seeking information from the prosecutors because they are doing a lot of investigation, and we have continued to do whatever investigation we're allowed to do. (Note: a DCFS spokesperson said no internal investigation would take place until after the trial.) “We have every interest in finding out what went wrong here. We know only a few things. I think they've all been made public. The things that we know, we try to act on those immediately, whatever it is that we know.”
Pritzker also said the state’s relationship with Lutheran Child and Family Services is being “pursued,” but he didn’t go any further.
The statement was prescient considering the story Capitol News Illinois published yesterday.
CNI reported the Lutheran Child and Family Services caseworker, Kurtavia White, a former had been arrested for her role in a strip club brawl and had at least eight orders of protection filed against her in the past decade.
Investigators found she copied and pasted entries about home visits to Mackenzie’s home and either missed or ignored signs of abuse of the girl.
White was later hired by DCFS.
Which leads me back to Pritzker.
I asked Pritzker Monday if the responsibility for DCFS failures falls on him.
“Listen, the buck stops with me about state government,” he said. “There's no doubt about it. I have responsibility for the agencies under my executive authority.”
Good start. Now the right way to frame the rest of the answer would have been “we’re doing everything we can to stop this from ever happening again.”
But, instead, he spent the next 2:30 absolving himself of responsibility for the failure of his agency.
“They don't want to talk about the fact that it takes some time to turn things around when things aren't working” Pritzker said. “And, I have to say, particularly a child welfare agency. I know that people say ‘well, gee, you've been in office for six years, how come this hasn't been entirely fixed? How come we haven't fixed the pension problem? How come we haven't, you know, made everything easy in the state of Illinois?’ Some of these things are built into a system that has failed for 25, sometimes longer, years. And we have worked diligently, particularly at the Department of Children and Family Services.”
The “change takes time” argument is one thing when you’re talking about paying down pension debt or rebuilding the state’s rainy day fund. It’s another when it’s about education funding or text scores. It’s a whole different ball of wax when you’re talking about an agency where kids are sleeping on floors of DCFS offices and 1,200 have died in the state’s care.
I’ve argued for a long time that politicians need to take problems at DCFS with more seriousness. I’ve also argued the Governor has the resources and connections to tear this agency down to the studs and rebuild it with the best and brightest voices from around the country.
As we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, Pritzker has the ability to muster every resource of state government if he finds it important. When he kept schools closed too long, he kept coming back tot he “saving one life” trope.
This isn’t about spending or taxes or social issues. These are lives. Human lives. Innocent kids like Mackenzie .
JB Pritzker has had more than six years since he promised to overhaul DCFS. Maybe saving the life of one more kid is worth finally getting serious about doing it.
