DCFS can't keep up with day care duties - Illinois Action for Children

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-dcfs-daycare-20120422,0,1379705.storyDCFS can't keep up with day care dutiesStaff, budget cuts blamed for missed inspections, highcaseloads, licensing and background-check delaysApril 22, 2012|By Christy Gutowski and Bill Ruthhart, Chicago Tribune reportersThe state agency charged with ensuring the safety of children in about 12,300 day carefacilities across Illinois has failed to inspect more than half of them annually as requiredby law, the Tribune has learned.The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is responsible for licensing daycare providers and enforcing standards that include making sure they hire employeeswithout criminal records, have well-trained staff and install working smoke detectors.Such checks are required by law to provide safe conditions for the more than 300,000children enrolled in day care, but the Tribune found DCFS has fallen woefully short ofthat mission.According to agency figures examined by the newspaper, 55 percent of Illinois day careoperations have not been inspected during their current three-year license period, a failureDCFS blames on staffing shortages.Carol Sternal isn't surprised. Her Mundelein center, she said, hasn't had an unannouncedinspection in about a decade."We never see our licensing rep," said Sternal, director of Cherished Children EarlyLearning Center. "We're supposed to have unannounced visits every year, and we neverhave any."The Tribune also found DCFS has failed to meet standards in other crucial areas affectingday care facilities. Among them:

• The agency has at least a monthlong backlog of criminal background checks it conductson day care employees. Critics say it can take as long as nine months for DCFS toprocess such reports.• Licensing officials who make inspections handle an average of 100 facilities each,double the number recommended in some national guidelines.• DCFS fails to process 56 percent of new day care applications and license renewalswithin 90 days, its benchmark, prompting complaints from some providers who fearlosing grant money because their licenses have lapsed.The enforcement problems underscore other shortcomings in an agency that also hasstruggled with high caseloads in the division that handles child abuse and neglect cases.The Tribune reported last month that those caseloads often were double what they shouldbe and that DCFS was violating critical terms of a 1991 federal consent decree settingmonthly limits on new cases for investigators.Those shortcomings prompted DCFS Director Richard Calica to freeze hiring in theagency's other units — including day care licensing — to free up resources for neglectand abuse cases.DCFS, however, acknowledges it also has a day care problem.In the short term, the agency is hiring four temporary workers to reduce its backgroundcheckbacklog; it also plans to hire more licensing workers this year.Marlowe rejected that notion, saying DCFS takes its licensing responsibility seriously.But he also said the agency's budget and staff have been cut for several consecutive yearsand the lack of funding has hampered its ability to meet standards.That includes making the background checks of day care workers. Marloweacknowledged those checks are running a month behind. New employees are allowed towork in day care facilities while the checks are pending, as long as they are not alonewith children.But the delay can be much longer than a month, said Lori Longueville, a child careofficial who works with day care providers in southern Illinois.Longueville said she just got background check results this month from DCFS that weresubmitted in July.The agency's inspector general, Denise Kane, has gotten complaints about thebackground delays and confirmed her office is investigating.

Staffing shortages at DCFS also have led to long delays in issuing and renewing licenses.The agency is supposed to process applications within 90 days, but DCFS does so only44 percent of the time, the Tribune found.The director of a North Shore day care center, who asked not to be identified, said shesent in a license renewal application in July that wasn't approved until eight months later.The delay cost the facility $3,000 in grant money because its license was allowed tolapse, money that would have gone to facility upgrades, she said."The system is clearly broken," she said. "Something needs to happen before somethingreally serious or tragic happens with kids."Child deathsWhen tragedies do occur, assessing blame isn't easy.The Tribune examined nearly one dozen incidents in the last five years in which a childeither died or was abused at an Illinois day care facility.In each case, DCFS records and interviews indicate the agency recently had inspected thefacility — in some cases the visits were unannounced, in others announced. Violationswere noted in some incidents, but none was clearly linked to what happened.That was the case in the January 2009 death of 16-month-old Benjamin Kingan, who diedafter suffering injuries at Minee Subee day care center in Lincolnshire. Teacher's aideMelissa Calusinski was sentenced to 31 years in prison for throwing the toddler to thefloor.Calusinski was alone in a room with eight children, which violated standards requiring atleast one other adult be present, prosecutors said. The day care's owner, Judith Katz, wascharged with instructing employees to lie to police about how many adults were presentwhen Benjamin was injured. Katz died last Sunday, the day before the case was to go totrial.Records indicate DCFS regularly visited Minee Subee, including a March 2008inspection 10 months before Benjamin's death. No violations were found during thatvisit, but a handful were noted during a 2007 inspection, including improper childsupervision.Minee Subee employees told DCFS that while its 2007 and 2008 inspections weresupposed to be unannounced, the owner knew when the annual inspection was coming, atleast in part because they tended to fall near the same dates. The center operateddifferently on those days, records show.A lawyer for the slain boy's family said employees told him that DCFS visits were rarelyunannounced, and that the licensing representative notified them a visit was planned.

"That's one of the things that's really got to change — otherwise how do you really knowthat what you are seeing is how they are truly operating?" said attorney Francis PatrickMurphy, who brokered a $2 million settlement against the center. "Of course they'regoing to be in compliance when the visits are announced."Marlowe said he had no direct knowledge of the allegation that DCFS workers notifiedthe day care of impending visits, but he acknowledged that monitoring visits typically fellaround the same time of year.Patricia Goodman, a Lake County day care advocate and retired DCFS licensingsupervisor, said the inspections would be more thorough if workers had lighter caseloads."We may never know if better DCFS monitoring could have exposed some of thepotential dangers these children faced," Goodman said of the Minee Subee case. "Butwhat we do know is we can do better."To thwart such tragedies, Marlowe said DCFS would have to be present in facilities allthe time."I think that's just wishful thinking to say more monitoring and inspections would preventsomeone from snapping on a crying child and throwing them to the ground," he said. "Ihave yet to look into one of these incidents and find that we hadn't been there."An Aurora girl's death in August shows even repeated DCFS intervention can't alwaysprevent a tragedy. Abigail Holland, 2, attended an unlicensed home that DCFS hadvisited twice and instructed to shut down, records show.DCFS responded to a complaint that the home was operating illegally and ordered TracyKennedy to stop caring for children until she received a license, according to agencyrecords. A DCFS official also noted that an aboveground pool in the backyard wasn'tproperly secured, the records show.Less than two months later, Abigail drowned in that pool after wandering outside whileKennedy was inside, alone with nine other children, according to records. Kennedy wascharged with endangering the life of a child and operating without a license. She haspleaded not guilty.Calls for changeAdvocates, including Illinois Action for Children, pushed this spring for legislation thatwould transfer day care licensing from DCFS to the Illinois Department of HumanServices. They argue that early childhood development is more central to that agency'smission and that too many facilities aren't inspected.

The human services agency opposed the switch, as did DCFS' Calica, who said it wouldtake the power to shut down a day care site away from his agency, which investigatesabuse and neglect.Although the bill gives DCFS more than a year to compile a report on whether it ismeeting performance standards, it did not address the agency's staffing shortages."We're putting in greater accountability measures and transparency and making themfocus on whether they are improving," said Sen. Dan Kotowski, D-Park Ridge, the bill'ssponsor.Deborah Green is among those who say the state must do more.Her son, 22-month-old Darjon Taylor, died of smoke inhalation after another child leftunsupervised at Porter's Playhouse on the South Side sparked a fire in the basement,according to records.DCFS inspected the day care two months before the January 2008 fire and issued aviolation for insufficient working smoke detectors, a problem a DCFS official said theoperator corrected, records show.A lawsuit that resulted in a $3 million judgment for the mother alleged the day care hadpoor supervision and inadequate smoke detectors. It also said the owner hadn't conductedmandated fire drills and first tried to extinguish flames instead of evacuating the sixchildren, five of whom survived.Green did not collect a dime. Under Illinois law, homes with up to 12 children are notrequired to have liability insurance."They should change the law," said Thomasine Porter, who owned Porter's. "We shouldhave had it. I did, but at one point, I let it lapse. … I wish she could have the money. Itruly wish she could."Green remembers vividly her final words to Darjon: "Goodbye, Poo Poo. Mommy lovesyou."The flood of memories — and pain — prompts her to warn other parents to be vigilant."If it happened once, it can happen again," she said through tears. "Do your research.Don't count on the system to investigate."