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10-year legal fight ends over DCFS rules
By Ofelia Casillas, Tribune staff reporter
February 23, 2007
A federal judge ended a 10-year legal fight Thursday, approving a settlement between the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and child-care professionals accused of abuse or neglect. The settlement, reached in 2003 and largely in effect since then, gives more rights to those under investigation by DCFS and provides more checks against the agency's power. But working out the details of the settlement proved daunting, dragging the case out for four more years.
FBI, State Investigate Drug Firm
The Chicago Tribune's lead article today (Wednesday January 31, 2007) has the headline "FBI, state investigate drug firm." The article concerns billing fraud by a DCFS-contract agency K.K. Bio-Science Inc. It reports that the current FBI probe follows a DCFS Office of Inspector General report. It does not state when, in the 15 year history of the contract with this company, questions about their fraudulent billing practices first arose or how those concerns came to the OIG's attention.
Recent due process victory for families
by Diane L. Redleaf
May 16th, 2006
The Redleaf Law Firm won a case in which a mother had been “indicated” for “lack of supervision” and “risk of harm,” the Redleaf Law Firm won a significant ruling on due process grounds. S. F. v. Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, No. 05 CH 14532 (Cir. Ct. Cook. Cty. Jan. 20, 2006) (attached hereto). The facts in Ms. F.’s favor were quite strong; she was found to have suffered an “accidental” injury, but at the same time DCFS ruled that her own unconsciousness for a period of time put her daughter at risk. The ruling in her case, however, had nothing to do with the merits because Ms. F. prevailed on a preliminary motion raising an important due process issue. That ruling has widespread ramifications for other families who might be pursuing appeals of DCFS findings against them.
Read more...Taste of welfare system
by Diane Redleaf
Editorial from the Chicago Tribune
July 13, 2006
Just as Hurricane Katrina gave middle-class Americans a view of poverty they were not accustomed to seeing, the recent case of the six-year old boy left by his mother gives happy-go-lucky Taste of Chicago goers a small taste for the fundamental failures of our state's child welfare system. That system continues to fail to address homelessness, abuse, and the basic needs of children for stability in their care. It failed the boy's mother by placing her in an abusive adoptive home. It has failed to do more than put bandages over the underlying problems of poverty and neglect that leave single-parent families and especially parents raised by the child welfare system itself-- at high risk for permanently unstable lives. Now the State s immediate solution prosecuting the mother for child endangerment and potentially locking her for a good while in a jail cell promises to turn a heartbreaking story into another longer-term child welfare system failure.
Read more...Extended Obligations
by Diane L. RedleafABA Journal & Report
May 2006
“Your obligation to your clients extends to saving their lives.” So said my professor Tony Amsterdam in an interview published in the Stanford Lawyer that I would read and reread from time to time after I graduated from law school. I don’t represent people on death row, though my clients’ cases involve life and death struggles. I’m a family defense lawyer, a strange and nearly unique kind of lawyer who tries to stop the State from seizing children from innocent parents. I’m also a vanishing form of a lawyer–a social policy litigator and legal services refugee, still working to compel state agencies to live up to their constitutional and statutory obligations.
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