Illinois child welfare agency's reporting on abuse and deaths scrutinized

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is now under scrutiny for its lack of proper reporting on child abuse and neglect cases, according to a report from the Illinois Answers Project.

The state agency reportedly failed to produce legally required public reports after examining what went wrong in hundreds of cases of child deaths and thousands of serious injuries, the Illinois Answers Project learned.

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More than 1,200 deaths and more than 3,000 other cases of serious injury have met the criteria for incident-specific reports since July 2018, according to data DCFS provided under an open records request. The case-specific reports are required when a child dies by suspected abuse or neglect, or dies or suffers a serious injury when they are in the state's care.

DCFS said in a statement that other reports that the agency prepares satisfy legal requirements but declined to answer additional questions from Illinois Answers or to comment on the call for investigations.

You can read the full report from Illinois Answers Project here.