Illinois Children and Family Services Advisory Council met Aug. 16.
Here are the minutes provided by the council:
Attendance
Members: Jennifer Hansen (Chair), Marge Berglind (Ex Officio), Kim King, Anita Weinberg, Brittany Kindle, Gabriel Foley, Nate Pietrini
Public: Nicholas Martin (pending member) and Joshua Travis (pending member)
Agenda
I. Welcome and Introductions
Jennifer called the meeting to order at 1:05pm.
II. Discussion of Council’s Direction
Kim began listing some possible areas of focus: 1st idea, kids that are in unauthorized placements that have resulted in bad outcomes and deaths for some of them. 2nd idea, looking at safety plans, what services have been given or not and what payments have been given or not. 3rd idea looking at timeline between referral for intact and when intact actually goes into effect and what kind of delay (and consequences because of delay) and 4th, keeping a single hotline worker or team with the same family throughout the whole process.
Gabe noted that kinship recognition as formal placement option, post-secondary education, mental health, housing, placement stability are areas of interest.
Nick suggested issues of licensing, mentioned knowing foster parents who come in system as fictive kin, issues with navigating system
Anita mentioned foster care licensing piece, looking at resources for foster parents. We should consider looking at broader categories.
Jennifer took a moment to review the statute’s description of Council’s areas of focus. Describing the broadness then when revised more narrow areas.
Kim said she is interested in how information is tracked, missing links in SACWIS from sequence A to sequence F for example. Could we take random samples of cases during certain period over a certain sequence?
Jenni suggested maybe not look at a particular sequence for particular time, but a particular family that got to that sequence and how they got to that point.
Josh asked how much information during hotline calls are shared with community partners? Per Marge: caseworker should get full file but not every community partner gets full file, depends on provider.
Anita brought up resources and how lack of resources are at the root of a lot of problems. This ties into Family first and the council should look more into this.
To do: Marge asked Kara for more information on Family First Steering Committee, minutes if available.
Summary of 3 possible projects: 1) Children in unauthorized placements- how many, how they get there, length of stay, where they go when they leave and if they don’t leave what is the outcome? Pick a period of time and analyze. Is this something could collect data on? 2) unlicensed relatives- issues with delays and percentage of delays and if that is an issue of importance. 3) Resources available- for foster families, for youth, and for families. Who’s looking at resources that are available. Resources as a root problem for foster parent problems, unauthorized placement issues, start to narrow down. 4) Family First, how the Department is going to best take advantage of this
III. Bylaw Changes
Jennifer asked what thoughts were on term limits. Kim said we need to keep people with historical knowledge on. Marge suggested draft an amendment for voting in September. Kara and Jenni will drat something.
Next Steps: Kara and Jenni will connect before September meeting
Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 2:50.
https://www2.illinois.gov/dcfs/aboutus/policy/Documents/ICFSAC/ICFSAC_Minutes_081622.pdf
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