McHenry Times

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) share in the blame for failing abused children in state care, House Rep. Steven Reick (R-Woodstock) said during a recent news conference.

Government can do only so much, and the blame for so many children who can't count of DCFS to save them "doesn't lie solely at the feet of a government agency," Reick said during the Thursday, Jan. 13 online news conference.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker | facebook.com/GovPritzker/

"It also lies at the feet of a drug epidemic where children are too often abandoned, shoved to the side or exploited to raise money for drugs," Reick said. "It lies at the feet of men who think their job, as men, is done when they make a child. The job of a real man is to take responsibility for and help raise that child."

No government agency can fix these problems, Reick said.

"It's our problem," he said. "The issues facing child welfare in the state don't lend themselves to sound bites in a press conference. All we can do here is let you know we're not running away from this but that it takes everybody to solve this problem and it needs to be done now, because these kids are being lost. Until we stop treating children as property, either of their parents or the state, and start treating them as citizens with rights, this cycle of failure will do nothing but continue."

Reick, along with fellow Reps. Tom Weber (R-Fox Lake) and Tony McCombie (R-Savanna), demanded hearings and called on majority Democrats in the state Legislature and Gov. J.B. Pritzker to join in their effort.

Reick also called the names of two children among the 1,122 who died between 2010 to March 2021 while under DCFS' watch, and said state lawmakers have tried to legislate improvements.

"Between the murders of AJ Freund in 2019 and Damari Perry's just last month, one thing has remained constant: the utter failure of DCFS to protect those who are supposed to be in their care," Reick said. "For the past three years, members of the House and Senate of both parties have tried to peel the onion that is DCFS to find the root causes of their failures, and the only conclusion that we could draw is that the agency is irretrievably broken and that no amount of money will solve its systemic failures."

Reick mentions the court contempt orders issued against DCFS Director Marc Smith earlier this month over the agency's failure, WREX 13 reported, to move children from psychiatric hospitals and into therapeutic or specialized foster care.

"The agency's defense was that it was unable to find such care when in fact the agency had closed almost 500 residential beds since 2015," Reick said.

He also wanted to know where Pritzker has been as children continue to suffer.

"He's been silent," Reick said. "He's missing in action. This is a man who is not afraid to run in front of a camera every chance he gets, but on this he has been totally silent."

Now is the time for Pritzker "to speak out on this issue," Reick said.

"Our foster care system is in shambles, largely because of what we tried to do with the best intentions is to keep families together until the situation becomes intolerable, and then we run the course to remove children from their homes," he continued. "But, by that time that happens, kids are often too scarred physically, emotionally and mentally to be put in traditional foster settings. They end up in psychiatric hospitals, and when they're ready for discharge there's no place for them to go."

Reick admitted that "I don't know where to go from this" but that local communities, rather than the state, should have "the primary responsibility of protecting children."

"In my opinion, the agents designated to protect children in a community should be primarily accountable to the community, not the state," he said. "The child welfare system will not work unless there is accountability at the local level and accountability to the community that's being served."