The number of Illinois children sent to secured, out-of-state facilities has nearly doubled since last year, according to an independent study commissioned by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
DCFS currently sends 664 children out of state at an annual cost of nearly $35 million, agency records show.
The growing need for such secured facilities in Illinois was underscored recently by the violent saga of 11-year-old Robert Sandifer, an abused child and convicted felon who was found dead in a pool of blood Thursday morning, just days after he allegedly shot and killed a girl who lived down the street from him.
State child welfare officials had asked a juvenile judge to send Robert to a locked residential facility where he could get shelter, counseling and care around the clock. But because there are no such facilities in Illinois, and placement out of state can take months and even years, Judge Thomas R. Sumner in July ordered Robert released to his grandmother.
Child welfare workers say that because more children are exposed to poverty, violence, family breakup and parental substance abuse, the number of Illinois children diagnosed with emotional and behavioral problems like Robert’s has grown during the last five years.
And the number who need to be in secure residential facilities probably is far greater than the number who make it there.
“The population not served is enormous, and increasing,” said Dr. Ronald Davidson, director of the mental health policy project of the University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Psychiatry, and the author of the DCFS report.
“The more treatment is delayed or withheld, the more severe the consequences for the youth, his family and society,” Davidson said. “We can take a kid like Robert, who had issues of abuse at 3, ignore his problems, and eventually we create a monster.”
DCFS regulations don’t allow the agency to license locked facilities, although it can send Illinois children to such facilities out of state, according to agency director Jess McDonald.
This spring, DCFS officials lobbied for legislation that would change those regulations, but the changes weren’t seen as crucial at the time, and so the legislation languished and died in a state House conference committee.
“I suspect now that it will pass,” said DCFS executive deputy director Cleo Terry.
“Unfortunately, it may have taken Robert’s tragedy to help other people understand why we were talking about secured facilities,” Terry said. “It sounds awful when you say we need to lock up 11-year-olds, but we are seeing more and more violence in younger children. And Robert’s case exemplifies the need.”
“I’m pretty sure we’ll have good luck this fall,” McDonald said.
A change in the regulation probably will not drastically alter the landscape of care in Illinois. McDonald said he expects existing children’s homes to create wards or units that can be locked.
He added, “Kids in the middle of treatment won’t just be yanked back to Illinois.”
Probably the most expensive and drastic change would be monitoring the new, locked units, and the care of the children sent there.
“The danger in running a locked program is that you will begin to place the wrong kind of child there: the one who is simply a runaway, and not a danger to himself or others,” said Jane Doyle, director of clinical services for Treatment Alternatives for Special Clients, an agency that works with offenders.
“Illinois is beginning to look at developing secure placements in-state, but officials are moving very carefully and slowly, and that’s as it should be,” Doyle said.
After examining internal agency data on 150 children placed out of state, Davidson concluded that all 150 could be served in Illinois, according to a draft of his report.
“I’m suggesting that we bring the kids home, and put the dollars to work right here in Illinois. It is a very doable thing,” Davidson said in an interview.
“There is nothing about the population of children who are out of state that mandates that they be shipped away to receive treatment. This is a bizarre artifact of the poor clinical thinking that has gone on in Illinois for more than a decade.”
“I hate to sound ghoulish, but this recent tragedy may be what we need to shake the system into action,” he said.
Of the 664 Illinois youths sent out of state, 402 are from Cook County, DCFS data shows.
While the overall number of children sent out of state grew by 75 percent, the number sent from Cook County grew by 90 percent, Davidson reported.
Of the 664 wards out of state, 298 are placed in secured facilities, at a cost of $15.5 million a year. Fifty of those children have been found delinquent and the rest are diagnosed as having major psychiatric problems, DCFS spokeswoman Lisa Donovan said.
The remaining 366 children are in facilities specializing in the treatment of behavioral and emotional conditions, like sexual aggressiveness, Donovan said. The cost of those programs is roughly $20 million.
A majority of the children are sent to Wisconsin and Missouri.
The state board of education sends another 200 children to out-of-state schools that handle emotional and behavioral disorders.
State special education chief Gail Lieberman said Friday that she could not immediately determine a total cost for those children, but Lieberman said their annual tuitions ranged from $11,275 to $19,500, and room-and-board costs added $26,000 to $101,000.
The Ann E. Casey Foundation has offered the Cook County courts $2.25 million in grants over three years to hire private social service agencies to supply bed space, supervision and counseling to children under 13, but the grants have not been finalized.
“The soonest we’d be able to accomplish this would be in the spring of next year,” said court supervisor Michael Rohan.
“The monies could be available if the chief judge and the County Board president sign off. But there have to be a number of contingencies that have to be reviewed.”
In the meantime, the juvenile court system has designated funds to add 15 juvenile probation officers who will check on children released to the custody of relatives, Rohan said. Ten of the officers started work Sept. 1, he said.
The sites would not be locked but would be closely monitored, Rohan said.
“It is not a replication of the detention center; it is a supervised, structured environment.”
In addition, the money will be used to create a program to assess whether children awaiting trial need secure detention. Part of the money may also be used for drug screenings and electronic monitoring, Rohan said.
