Watchdog: 123 children died despite DCFS intervention, up from previous year

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is charged with protecting endangered children, but 123 of them died within a 12-month period despite the agency’s intervention within the preceding year — more than two-thirds after DCFS returned the children to families with a history of domestic violence, mental health or substance-abuse problems.

In the last fiscal year, 24 of the endangered children who came into contact with DCFS wound up dying from homicide, seven from suicide, 37 accidentally, 34 from natural causes and 21 from undetermined causes, according to a new report by the agency’s own inspector general.

“The default procedure is to leave children in their homes when that might not be the most appropriate intervention,” said state Rep. Anna Moeller, D-Elgin, who serves on a bipartisan General Assembly DCFS working group.

Concluding that DCFS staffers were taking “shortcuts that lead to tragedy,” DCFS’ Office of the Inspector General found during the fiscal year that ended June 30, the agency investigated 123 cases in which children died despite DCFS contact with the family in the preceding year, a 20% increase from the previous fiscal year.

“As I submit this report, I am disheartened that many of the problems I identify here have been identified before, both by me and my predecessor,” Meryl Paniak, acting inspector general for DCFS, wrote in her report.

The report found children died because overworked DCFS investigators returned children with abusive parents or caretakers.

An example Paniak cited in her report was the case of Andrew ‘AJ” Freund, a 5-year-old boy from Crystal Lake who died after DCFS let him return to the custody of his abusive mother.

AJ’s mother, JoAnn Cunningham, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder after authorities found his body in a shallow grave in April. AJ’s father, Andrew Freund Sr., has been indicted on murder charges for his son’s death and is awaiting trial.

Crystal Lake Police Department

In AJ Freund’s case, Paniak found DCFS investigators “ignored the parents’ long history of addiction, the mother’s recent relapse, and the parents’ isolation of the children from caring relatives and day care providers.”

DCFS fired the two child welfare investigators in December, Carlos Acosta and Andrew Polovin, over their handling of the case.

In her report, Paniak said AJ’s case is emblematic of practices by DCFS that allow children to return to families with a history of violent abuse or addiction.

“The death of any child in Illinois is a tragedy and this department is deeply committed to protecting vulnerable children in this state,” said Jassen Strokosch, a spokesperson for DCFS, in a statement. “Over the past several years, that mission became increasingly challenging as funding cuts and staff reductions left the agency under-resourced and without the staff needed to give vulnerable children the care they deserve.”

Of the 123 children who died after coming into contact with the agency during the period covered in the report, DCFS returned 87 of them to families with a history of domestic violence, mental health or substance abuse problems.

The bipartisan General Assembly working group will meet again in February, Moeller said, and will likely suggest legislative fixes for the agency.

“The department has been under-resourced for a long time, and we need to make sure we are supporting the agency so it can do its job,” the Elgin legislator said.