The hits keep on coming for Illinois’ child welfare agency.
In a report released Thursday, the auditor general’s sample showed workers almost never complete a safety checklist and often give the wrong number of vaccinations, either too few or too many. State Sen. Steve McClure (R-Springfield) says Department of Children and Family Services resources are short.
“There needs to be more training and more staff,” said McClure, “and there needs to be someone from the director’s office that is making sure that everyone is completing the tasks they are mandated by statute to complete, like these checklists, etc., and apparently, whoever is supposed to be doing that is not doing that. And once this is corrected, DCFS will be in a better place.”
Does DCFS have problems which simply firing director Marc Smith (pictured) will solve?
“To my knowledge, we have never had a director who has been found in contempt of court the amount of times the current director has been found in contempt of court,” said McClure. Smith has now been found in contempt a tenth time for housing children in, for example, psychiatric hospitals long after they have been cleared to be released.
“I wonder if the director can handle this,” said McClure. “I’m not sure that he can.”
The report is here.