Will County Gazette

House GOP Leader Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs) is demanding action after Department of Children and Family and Services (DCFS) Director Marc Smith was recently held in contempt of court for essentially failing to do his job.

Earlier this month, Durkin sent a letter to Rep. Camille Lilly (D-Chicago), chair of the House Appropriations Human Services Committee, demanding that she convene a hearing on the failures at DCFS that include allegations Smith failed to place two youth in the care of the state in appropriate settings for months on end.

Instead, the two youths were kept in psychiatric care well after they were ready to be placed with a family.

“The Department of Children and Family Services receives over a billion dollars in state support annually,” Durkin said in his letter. “It is tasked with protecting the state’s most vulnerable residents, a mission both Republicans and Democrats can agree is essential to the state. That is why it is so heartbreaking to see that DCFS Director Marc Smith is being held in contempt of court for failing to do his job.”

CBS2 reports a Cook County Juvenile Court judge issued two contempt of court orders against Smith on the grounds he violated the rights of the children by leaving them neglected. In addition to the legal orders, DCFS could also face fines of as much as $2,000 a day until the judge deems those children properly placed.

“Unfortunately, these are not isolated incidents,” Durkin added. “Under the Pritzker administration, more than 350 children have been left to languish in psychiatric care despite having been cleared to move on to a family setting. The unprecedented step by the Cook County judiciary to hold Director Smith in contempt needs to be a wake-up call to the General Assembly.”

In one of the orders handed down by the judge, Smith reportedly described how a 9-year-old girl suffered years of physical and sexual abuse at home. After being placed under DCFS care, she was put into a psychiatric hospital, where she remained even after she deemed medically ready to be released in June 2021.

A judge also wrote DCFS ignored numerous court orders to get the child out of the hospital late last year, resulting in Smith now being held in contempt. The girl has now been confined in the psychiatric hospital for more than six months since the date she was supposed to be discharged.

The other contempt order stems from a 13-year-old boy being forced to sleep in a storage room while in DCFS care.

In the case of the girl, DCFS over the years had received several complaints related to her, including reports she has been sexually assaulted since the age of 7 and suffered other forms of abuse. Still, the agency failed to place her in protective custody until October 2020.

Durkin is calling on Lilly to “immediately convene hearings” with Smith on the issue, adding “the taxpayer dollars that have been allocated to DCFS are clearly not being spent the way the General Assembly intended, and the core mission of DCFS is not being fulfilled. It is the duty of your committee to immediately investigate this matter, our children can’t wait.”