Legislature approves bill to prioritize family members in foster care; heads to Pritzker's desk

SPRINGFIELD -- A bill soon heading to Gov. JB Pritzker's desk would direct foster care officials in Illinois to prioritize placing children with relatives.

The House voted unanimously on Monday to pass the Kindship in Demand Act, or KIND Act. House Bill 4781 puts an obligation on the Department of Children and Family Services to use a "kin-first approach" when placing children in foster care settings. Lawmakers and advocates said it's better for children to be placed with a family member or another person close to the child when possible.

"If we can stabilize 10 or 12 kids, we're going to change somebody's community," Rep. Marcus Evans, D-Chicago, told the House Adoption and Child Welfare Committee on Sunday.

Pritzker previously voiced support for the idea at a news conference in December.

The approach ultimately will allow the state more access to federal funds, Nora Collins-Mandeville from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois told the committee Sunday. Currently, the state reimburses family members for care costs, but once they become certified under the new bill, the state can get more federal funding to cover those expenses.

Like most other state agencies, DCFS faced challenges during a two-year budget impasse that ended in 2017 and strained the system's funding and ability to promptly place children in care settings.

The Pritzker administration has ramped up funding for the agency, but former DCFS director Marc Smith was found by a Cook County judge in contempt of court multiple times in 2022 for failing to find adequate placements for foster care children, some of whom were residing in psychiatric hospitals beyond medical need. An appellate court later vacated the contempt citations.

Rep. Steve Reick, R-Woodstock, said Monday that state lawmakers and DCFS' new director, Heidi Mueller, have taken a different approach in recent years.

"I don't think we would've seen this two years ago because there's a new way of looking at child welfare," he said.

Nearly 10,000 children in DCFS care live with family members, but more than 60% of those families are not eligible for monthly foster care payments, clothing vouchers, or foster care support groups, according to the ACLU.

Kin-first foster systems have decreased risk of abuse and give a higher chance of achieving permanency, according to Casey Family Programs - the nation's largest foundation focused on foster care.

DCFS reduced the number of children and young adults in its care from 50,000 in 1995 to 16,000 in 2023. The number, however, has risen in the past year to 18,000.

Illinois' foster care system ranked in the bottom third of states in 2019 for children placed in permanent homes, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Between 2017 and 2021, the number of children who were placed in a permanent home decreased by 7.8%, according to the 2021 Child Welfare Outcomes Report to Congress.

"We know that placing youth in the child welfare system with relatives lessens the trauma associated with family separation, reduces the number of times a child is moved, enhances permanency options if youth cannot be reunified, results in higher placement satisfaction for youth in care, and delivers better social, behavioral, mental health, and educational outcomes for youth than when they are placed in non-kin foster care," Collins-Mandeville said in a statement.

Under the KIND Act, there would also be different criminal background criteria for relatives and foster parents. The federal government allows DCFS to waive "non-safety-related licensing" for relative caregivers on a case-by-case basis. Relatives would be subject to a personal analysis assessing their criminal record and its potential impact on the child. The bill would allow DCFS to consider, for example, the overrepresentation of minorities in the prison system, especially for minor drug felonies.

Courts would also have a larger role in family-finding efforts like monitoring whether DCFS complies with notifying relatives that a child has been removed from its parents' custody within 30 days.

Amalia Huot-Marchand is a graduate student in journalism with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and a Fellow in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of print and broadcast outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.