DCFS set to resume parental visits
Advocates say it’s ‘much too little too late’ after hiatus
Quincita Fleming hasn’t seen her three children, ages 10, 2 and 5 months, in person since March.
That’s when the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which court records show has custody of Fleming’s children due to a pending abuse case, suspended supervised parental visits for all children in its care because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
After months of pressure from advocates and a lawsuit brought by the Cook County public defender’s office on behalf of Fleming and three other mothers, the enforced social distancing between parents and their children is about to end.
DCFS on Monday told staff and partner agencies that it is preparing to resume in-person visits as soon as June 26, when all four regions of the state are expected to move into phase four of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s reopening plan.
Advocates for families who are involved with the state’s child welfare agency say the move is “much too little too late” for parents and children who haven’t been able to see one another for three months.
Fleming has been unable to breastfeed her baby during a crucial developmental stage.
Within a couple days of their last visit her supply of milk dried up, she said.
While she is now able to video chat with her kids weekly, she worries about how the separation is affecting their family bond, particularly with her youngest.
“I don’t even know if he recognizes my voice or he knows who he’s speaking with when he sees my face on screen,” said Fleming, who declined to discuss her court case.
Fleming is among more than 10,000 other parents across the state have lost out on important bonding time that will be essential their ability to reunite as families, advocates say, despite the fact that reunification is the stated goal of DCFS in most cases.
“It is inexcusable that it took them until June 15 to begin to prepare for this,” said Tanya Gassenheimer, an attorney who advocates on behalf of parents who are involved with the child welfare system at the Chicagobased Shriver Center on Poverty Law.
Gassenheimer and other advocates also are concerned that parental visits won’t resume on a weekly basis until July 15, and sibling visits also will remain on hold until that time.
DCFS suspended all supervised parent and sibling visits for children in foster care on March 25, four days after Pritzker’s statewide stay-at-home order went into effect. The policy was implemented “in light of the extreme circumstances related to COVID-19 and the need to ensure that the health of children is protected through social distancing,” The agency instructed its caseworkers and the private agencies that do most of the front-line child welfare work to “identify alternative ways” — such as telephone calls or videoconferencing — for families to visit to “allow children to continue to have meaningful interaction with their families during this time.”
“Every decision we’ve made during this crisis has been focused on the safety of the children, the families and the staff,” DCFS spokesman Jassen Strokosch said. “Safety is our first and foremost goal for children and our families.”
As the new coronavirus was surging in Illinois, Strokosch said, the agency determined that the best way to protect everyone involved was to suspend supervised visitations, which involve not only a parent and children but also foster families, caseworkers, transportation workers and others.
“There’s a larger network involved in any visitation that takes place,” and all those people in turn come into contact with their own families and others, he said.
Another roadblock to resuming parental visits is that many of the venues where they usually take place, such as public libraries, also have been closed due to COVID-19, Strokosch said.
“That’s just not a fair explanation,” said Aaron Goldstein, who heads the civil division in the Cook County public defender’s office, which is representing Fleming and the other mothers in their lawsuit against DCFS.
Visitations have been allowed to continue in cases where courts have allowed parents to spend time unsupervised time with their children, and the agency hasn’t issued coronavirusrelated restrictions for foster families who are caring for children in DCFS custody, Goldstein said.
“The issue is they didn’t think this out,” he said. “They implemented a draconian policy.”
Advocates point to a Mach 27 advisory from the Children’s Bureau of the federal Department of Health and Humans Services that “strongly discourages” child welfare courts across the country from issuing “blanket orders that are not specific to each child and family that suspend family time.”
The bureau also urged state courts “to hold the child welfare agency accountable for ensuring that meaningful, frequent family time continues” and “become familiar with ways in which in-person visitation may continue to be held safely.”
While acknowledging the federal guidance, Strokosch said that “the only way to make decisions that take into account everyone’s safety is to make those decisions on a stateby-state basis.”
So far, attempts to get courts to intervene broadly on behalf of parents in Illinois have been unsuccessful. There have been some cases, particularly in southern Illinois, where judges have ordered visits to resume, Strokosch said.
The Cook County public defender’s lawsuit, filed May 6, was dismissed from Chancery Court by Circuit Judge Caroline Moreland because the plaintiffs all had pending abuse or neglect cases before the Child Protection Division and each had filed a separate motion to compel in-person visits.
“That court and those judges continue to address the very issues presented by this case,” Moreland wrote in a May 18 opinion. “This court concludes that that forum is the appropriate one for plaintiffs’ grievances.”
The Child Protection Division, meanwhile, has not taken up an emergency motion from the public defender’s office seeking a temporary restraining order against the DCFS policy. The office is appealing both cases.
The situation for parents who’ve been separated from their children has become even more frustrating as the restrictions in Pritzker’s original stay-at-home order have loosened in recent weeks.
“You can get marijuana, you can go golfing, you can now go to restaurants, but parents can’t see their children,” Goldstein said.
As they await court action, advocates from the Shriver Center and elsewhere also have been putting public pressure on DCFS and the Pritzker administration. With the renewed public focus on racial inequality after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, advocates have noted the visitation policy has a disproportionate impact on black families, who make up the overwhelming majority of DCFS clients.
“For Black lives to matter, Black families must also matter,” the Shriver Center wrote in a June 12 post on Twitter.“For close to 3 months, @IllinoisDCFS has kept over 11,000 parents, children, and siblings apart, many of whom are Black. This is unacceptable.”
The tweet drew a rebuke from Pritzker spokesman Jason Rubin, who tweeted in response: “@IllinoisDCFS is in the process of updating the policy, as the @shrivercenter knows. To claim @IllinoisDCFS does not care about black families is frankly disgusting.”
Rubin later apologized on Twitter, writing, “It’s hard not to get heated when the agency is attacked for challenges that are not of their own making and do not have any easy answers.”
While the resumption of visits in a partial victory, advocates have ongoing concern about whether the months of separation will have a lasting effect on reunification of families.
“This is not over because we don’t know the damage that has been done with this gap,” Goldstein said.
Fleming found out Friday that her first in-person visit with her three kids is scheduled for July 2. She’s planning a belated celebration with pizza for her oldest, who had a “quarantine birthday” in May.