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Being a Wisconsin native, I have a love/hate relationship with the state of Illinois, but this latest article has me questioning the mentality of the elected officials.
A news story came out announcing budget cuts for the state that will harm the most at risk children. The government could not pass a balanced budget, so government programs are being cut. Cuts include 179 jobs in the Department of Children Family Services and another 73 jobs in the Department of Human Services.
I love the quote that came from a DCFS spokesman saying the agency is reassigning workers who are in “lower need” positions to ones that are more critical to child services. Great. Just what we need is workers who have no experience with children now reviewing whether or not children need to be removed from homes, what services they need, and how to access those services.
The Illinois government is assuring the citizens of the state that children will not be affected by these cuts. I disagree. The largest staff cuts in the Human Services Department are in an office that connects people with food stamps, child care and medical care.
Who are the families that are using these services? The children who are in foster care or at the greatest risk of going into foster care if their parents cannot get the services they need. Foster children under the age of 5 are eligible for WIC payments. Parents who fall in or below the poverty range are also eligible, as well as pregnant women in the poverty range. When I first went into the office to receive the vouchers for Mackenzie, my appointment was nearly two hours long, and we live in a small county that isn’t nearly as busy. What will the wait in larger cities be like?
Of course government officials are insisting that children will not be affected by these cuts. I beg to differ. You cannot cut over 200 staff members and not affect children. Most social workers are already overloaded with cases, and now you’re going to add more children to each case load? How can the children not suffer? I have no doubt the foster children will still receive care, but will the parents be able to access the services that they need when they get little or no attention from the worker in charge of their case? What about when a stressed out parent needs help from their worker immediately? One child is harmful to another and they need the child moved. How long will it take the worker to respond to this parent and how much “damage” can the violent child do in the time it takes for the already overworked worker to respond?
What about the children who are going hungry because the birth parent cannot afford to take several hours off of work to get WIC vouchers? Will that child then end up in foster care because of neglect and we have more children clogging the system when it could have easily been prevented?
We all know that there is wasteful spending in every government. Wouldn’t it make more sense to cut spending there rather than critical services for children? Then again, what do I know? I’m just a parent.
I just read your article of 7/8/07 on “How to Pay Your Adoption Agency”. I wish I had read this 16 months ago before handing over $6,000 a small adoption agency in Missouri (Small World). After signing on and being given their paperwork to complete, we found them largely unavailable and much of the information given us about the procedure regarding what they could offer, was untrue. We fired them within 2 months. We persued our money for months with no refund (a few dollars were returned for post-placement but after so many mailings stating our case to their “board” the little bit they sent was a wash. We moved on to another agency with exactly what this article recommends…lttle money up front, and brought home a beautiful infant baby girl 8months later! Great advice!