ILL.—Trust the state of Illinois to manage to find a way to suck up to that threat to all children everywhere, DCFS.
Yes, the Department of Children and Family Services, a nearly 50-year-old boondoggle that has left possibly hundreds of thousands of children in dangerous conditions, homeless, parentless, and even dead, has received a big sum of money (over $474,000) to “upgrade” their “call centers” so that there won’t be a wait time to “get investigators out into the field” such as they’re currently experiencing with their old outdated 30-year-old system. This big chunk of funding comes after millions were stripped from DCFS’ budget in May so Illinois governor Pat Quinn could act like he was trimming some of the fat from Illinois’ deficit budget. Now some of the fat is back on. And it all has to do with how reports are being made to the agency’s hotline.
The premise for the expenditure is this: The DCFS call center, wherein people can call in and report “child abuse, neglect, or an endangered or exploited child,” is antiquated. People call in and then have to be called back, oftentimes resulting in lag times, during which children could be in more imminent harm. Since DCFS is all about the kids, that just wouldn’t do, so they got this newfangled computerized system, and now it had fancy features such as the ability for everyone who on staff that way to oversee “wait times” on calls, create the ability to record such calls, and provides “messages” so people will know the wait times and statuses of their calls. Oh, and by the way, the funding also helps put additional “intact family” staff on the payroll, so that “support” can be provided to families who don’t have their kids removed from them (like most DCFS victims do.) You can read the full self-aggrandizing press release here.
Yep. It’s like that.
Those who have ever had to experience the horror of having DCFS in their lives in any measure know that of course, keeping families “intact” is the last thing on the list. The sad fact is that DCFS, no matter what the state or what they’re called, is nothing but legalized child abduction (which you can read about here, here and here), and those who are in enough favor with the state (on as perpetual and overrun foster families, with the gigantic stipend the state fronts them for each subsequent child) will have as much work as the agency can send them….all on the backs of those of us in the state who do take care of our children and provide for them on our own, as well as pay the taxes that they all suck off of to fund their existence.
We’ve chronicled many outrageous stories of people who have been victimized locally by DCFS, who, we have reported repeatedly since March 2003, is either always in the way when you don’t need them, and never there when you do. From the 2002-03 case of the McKechnie kids in Albion (who were taken from their mother forcibly and landed with their chronic-alcoholic father who pissed all over their stuffed animals while in his drunken haze) to the 2012 case of baby Pashia Henderson, who died in the care of a DCFS “foster parent” who may have overdosed the barely-one-year-old on Bendryl, and even our own case of a fraudulent DCFS report being made against us (2003), there are vastly more screwups within the agency than there are success stories. DCFS is a construct of a power-hungry state machine gone insane, and it’s spread across the country like a wildfire, destroying families and lives with impunity…because the courts allow it to. It’s not enough that this is a country of laws; with DCFS, there has to be some kind of middle ground “gray area” where something isn’t quite a crime, but it’s going to get you into court anyway…and violate your rights while they’re at it.
Baby Pashia Henderson. RIP.
In our case (wherein, due to us starting up our paper, our jealous ex-boss called DCFS and made a fraudulent report, in his wigged-out state telling the agency that our 7-year-old was a 1-year-old infant, our 12-year-old was 8, and our 15-year-old was 10), we knew exactly what to do: when the caseworker showed up, we already had the sheriff on the property, telling the caseworker she could come no further than the roadway, as she was not an officer of the law, was not in possession of a warrant that allowed her upon the property, and had no statutory authority whatsoever (and caseworkers DO NOT; NEVER, EVER let them tell you they do.) When she shouted across the yard from the roadway what she believed her business was with us, we advised her that we’d be happy to talk to her—with our attorney present and a tape recorder running. That sent her screeching in the other direction. In order to make our point, we called her office in Salem and said we’d come on up there—armed with a tape recorder—to find out who made the report ONLY. She wasn’t interested. We went anyway. She spoke to us briefly without the tape running, only to say that she couldn’t give us the name of the reporter. Via a FOIA (freedom of information act), we got it anyway. We threatened them with a lawsuit for disrupting our business over an obviously-fraudulent call. They dismissed the case post haste.
And this is how you deal with this repulsive agency.
- First, you must understand that they have no statutory (according to Illinois statutes) authority to do what they traditionally do, which is to come into your home, accuse you of doing things to your kids, interview you, make a report against you, and take your children from you. NONE. You cannot have your rights TAKEN from you without due process, and that process they go through is not DUE (in accordance to the Constitution). If you committed a crime, you need to be charged, taken through the trial process (DUE PROCESS) and punished accordingly if found guilty. What DCFS does is strictly based on WHAT RIGHTS YOU GIVE UP. Therefore, DON’T GIVE THEM UP.
- Do NOT let them into your home. NEVER speak with ANY of them, in person or on the phone, without a tape recorder running (and TELL them you will be recording the conversation; see how fast that shuts them up).
- If you really want to get under their skin, tell them you’ll meet with them at your attorney’s office; they won’t do that either.
- Any communication they make with you via mail should be taken to your attorney immediately to be addressed.
- And if your children are endangered by DCFS at their school, instruct them to pretend they’re sick, “throw up” in the bathroom and then tell their teacher or school nurse they need to call you to come pick them up. That’s how our then-12-year-old alerted us to the DCFS caseworker showing up at her school to “interview” each of the kids (including the second-grader who was reported to have been an infant; you’d think the caseworker would have been alerted to the fraudulence of the situation at about that time, but no; she had state money to make, after all, and if there are no cases, she gets no paycheck, right?)
DCFS in Illinois is a bloated, ineffective, intrusive agency whose caseworkers don’t need a degree in social work (just a degree, believe it or not; it can be in history, calculus, basket-weaving) to hold their jobs, and generally get them because they “know someone” (think Bill Peyton). They create chaos where there is none, and ignore cases where intervention is called for. And as always: either a thing is a crime, or it is not. There is such a thing in Illinois STATUTES as “child neglect.” Let a person be charged with it and it get through the system, or let it go. But these intermediaries whose own overimportance is thrust upon families for the sole purpose of destroying them needs to STOP. It’s one of the many reasons there is a mass exodus out of the state of Illinois…with Quinn at the helm. It’s not safe here anymore; we can’t stop the juggernaut that’s the state, who ignores the tax burden imposed by fewer and fewer people, and makes victims of who’s left. But there are some of us who will still fight. And telling the truth like this is how.