Chicago winter doesn’t keep Florida Democrat from taking top job at DCFS

As the snow fell during one of the worst winter storms on record earlier this month, George Sheldon set off from his downtown Chicago hotel on foot — in a pair of loafers — to meet Gov. Bruce Rauner at his Lake Shore Drive condo.

“I’m saying to myself, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ ” the Florida native joked Friday.

Sheldon, Rauner’s pick to head the scandal-plagued Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, will face far bigger challenges than adjusting to Midwestern weather when he starts his new job next week.

Sheldon, who ran Florida’s Department of Children and Families from 2008 through 2011, says he’s up for the challenge.

“There’s no magic bullet,” Sheldon said, speaking on a cellphone as he drove along Florida’s cross-state Alligator Alley. “I do think I’ve got an understanding [after] running the system in Florida, which was troubled when we got there, and also the federal system.”

Sheldon’s hiring comes after a period of extreme turmoil in the Illinois agency. In January, Director Bobbie Gregg announced she will leave the post, meaning DCFS would get its fifth director in less than a year and a half.

Her predecessor, Arthur Bishop, resigned in February 2014 in the wake of a Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ investigation that raised questions about a criminal conviction and paternity case in his past. Former Gov. Pat Quinn had appointed Bishop just a month earlier in the wake of DCFS admitting that it had miscounted the number of children who’d died of abuse and neglect for several years.

Sheldon, who said he’d be in Springfield on Tuesday, was recognized as a leading reformer by, among others, the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

From 2011 to 2013, he was acting assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ agency for Children and Families. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for Florida’s attorney general in 2014, losing to Republican incumbent Pam Bondi.

Neil Skene, who worked as special counsel for Sheldon when he headed the Florida agency, said Sheldon “likes a challenge” and is “very nonpartisan. . . . He is a person who tries to see all sides of an issue.”

Sheldon said his meeting with Rauner two weeks ago lasted about 45 minutes. The two had never met before, Sheldon said.

“He had heard from other folks about some of what we did in Florida and at the federal level,” Sheldon said. “I clearly got the impression that he wanted the [Illinois] system to work. . . . I clearly got the impression that he was open to change, that he would listen and that we would work together to move things forward.”

Sheldon concedes he has much to learn about how things operate in Illinois. He said he wants to talk to “frontline” DCFS workers and young adults who’ve come through the foster care system — a strategy he said worked for him in Florida and Washington, D.C.

“We designed a whole child welfare system in this country, and we never talked to kids,” Sheldon said.

Sheldon said he understands the state has issues with residential care for kids, and he plans to take a close look at that system.

“It’s clear there are some issues with residential care, and I think you can do it right,” he said. “I’m not sold on residential care as a long-term strategy. . . . It’s not natural to change your parents every eight hours,” Sheldon said, referring to staff shift changes at residential centers.

And as Sheldon settles into his new job, he knows he’ll need to be better prepared for Illinois winters.

“I realized I need some new foot apparel,” he said.

Contributing: Natasha Korecki