Every voice counts

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To the Editor,

As a mental health professional, a therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker, I have spent my entire career working with people with physical, emotional and developmental disabilities, people with drug and alcohol problems, and abused and neglected children, including those placed in foster care by DCFS. So often, when people hear what I do for a living, they say things like, “That’s wonderful; we need more people like that,” or “Thank goodness there are people like you who do that kind of work.” Unfortunately, if the currently proposed Illinois budget is passed, there will be a lot fewer people doing the work I do.

For example, the Department of Children and Family Services is facing a 50 percent budget cut if the current plan passes, which would result in cutting services to thousands of abused and neglected children across the state. One of the services slated for elimination is the Integrated Assessment Program.

The IA Program is a team of licensed mental health professionals who conduct clinical, comprehensive, individual and family assessments for each member of a family whose children are placed in foster care. Our Integrated Assessments examine physical, psychological, developmental and environmental factors to more quickly determine what families need in order to parent their children safely and effectively, and how best to provide them with such assistance. We are the first state in the nation to implement such an approach, and other states are looking to Illinois as a national model of assessment in the field of child welfare because of the success of the Integrated Assessment Program.

Disbanding the IA Program would result in Illinois losing substantial federal funding for child welfare services, risking noncompliance with federal directives, failing to comply with consent decrees, and violating our own state law (20 ILCS 505/5.25), which mandates that a mental health assessment/integrated assessment be completed for all children who are taken into protective custody.

Finally, a wealth of empirical evidence shows that prompt assessment and early intervention bring many tangible benefits to a child welfare population: reduced time in foster care; faster achievement of the permanency goal in the child’s best interest; and greater success in treating multiple problems ranging from developmental delays to psychological trauma. Eliminating these benefits would, of course, mean reassuming all the costs of prolonged foster care, delayed permanency and belated treatment. These are significant costs, in both financial and human terms.

It would, in short, be a tragic failure not to fund a program which has already begun to deliver on the promise of an effective, front-end assessment for every family entering the child welfare system.

I urge you to support full funding of the budget Gov. Quinn submitted and not allow Illinois’ most vulnerable citizens, including children, to fall victim to state budget cuts. On behalf of myself, my professional colleagues in the various helping professions, and the children and families we serve, thank you so much! Every voice counts.

David J. Gorenz, LCSW, ACSW, CADC

Princeton