Q&A Question & Answer
Jess McDonald is the 1997 recipient
of the Motorola Excellence in Public
Service Award. The award honors leadership and achievements by a government administrator. McDonald was chosen from among two dozen nominees,
but he refuses to take full credit. "Everyone — my staff, the governor's office,
my family — all played a part," he says.
Sponsors are the Aon Corp. of Chicago,
the North Business Industrial Council
and Illinois Issues.
Jess McDonald
He heads one of the state's most
troubled agencies: the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
But Jess McDonald, once a caseworker
himself, has made strides in the past
three years in overcoming that history.
The agency has been criticized for
burdening workers with heavy
caseloads; McDonald hired 440 more
caseworkers. The agency has been criticized for mishandling cases; McDonald
strengthened professionalism by raising
credential requirements for staff. He
sent more than 150 supervisors back to
school to get their master's degrees in
social work. He's aiming to get
national accreditation for every
agency office. And so far, nine have
gotten it, proof of higher achievement
for those offices. Further, McDonald
has reached out to work with communities and law enforcement agencies,
a move he says is "clearly the future."
There has been change: Caseloads
have fallen sharply; DCFS adoptions
have more than doubled; the number
of children in foster care or substitute
care has decreased from double-digit
percentages to 1 percent last year.
Still, on an average day McDonald's
$1.3 billion agency fields nearly 1,000
calls on its child abuse hotline, nearly
double the number a decade ago.
And, of the 125,226 cases reported in
fiscal year 1996, 44,941 were
confirmed victims, proving that child
abuse and neglect are still major
societal problems. Gov. Jim Edgar's
appointed troubleshooter still sees a
lot of work to be done.
The following is an edited interview
with Illinois Issues' Jennifer Davis.
Judy Spencer took the photographs.
Q. What do you see as the
future of the child welfare
system in Illinois and nationally?
It's hard telling. In the future, the
child welfare system may benefit from
welfare reform, if welfare reform is
able to live up to its promise of getting
people employed and keeping them
employed.
I also think partnerships with law
enforcement will be vital. We've done
that in Illinois. Where there is severe
sexual or physical abuse and there
needs to be a prosecution, that can be
done.
Community-based delivery systems.
Clearly, for child welfare, that is the
future. It ought not be a surprise to the
professionals in the field that the
future was defined by Jane Addams
almost 90 years ago with settlement
movements like Hull House. People
have moved away from it, but I think
we're going to have to rediscover that.
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Jess McDonald
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Q. Are we at a point to do that?
I think there has probably been
more interest in the last five years. At
the same time, it's not going to be done
overnight. That's the disadvantage to
Illinois' system. Our statewide system
does not require us to work with communities. They have much different
ideas about why we have problems so
those are difficult discussions. Still, in
the long run, you've got to have them.
We've got to bring communities to the
table.
Q. Next year marks a decade
since the American Civil Liberties Union sued and won reform
of Illinois' child welfare system.
You weren't at the helm then, but
at the time DCFS was described
as "so overloaded, underfunded
and mismanaged that it routinely
inflicted terrible harm" on its
charges. Today, even though
DCFS' responsibilities have
grown, it is not plagued with that
reputation. Why?
Maybe the expectations have
changed more than the statutory
responsibilities have changed. I'm not
certain at the time that DCFS was
initially sued in the '80s that there
were the same expectations for
performance.
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There is always a sense of outrage when there's a tragedy. And it
seems the outrage dissipates and
there's a quick fix and everyone
disappears until the next tragedy.
The difference here is that the
ACLU made it clear their interest
is in the long term. They're not
interested in quick fixes. They
know it's a difficult mission.
There are going to be wide-ranging opinions about how the work
should be done. I would hope the
public understands that even the
best trained people with the best
set of resources will occasionally
have tragedies on their caseload.
And that has happened. The point
is to make the kind of changes
that will endure political transitions, that build strong systems for
the future, that you can be critical
of and change as conditions in society
change. In the early '80s, people
weren't thinking about crack cocaine
and its influence, but now we're seeing
that's more and more an issue. Issues
around poverty, crime, poor housing
have always influenced child welfare.
Q. Speaking of how poverty
and crime affect your agency, do
you have any idea how welfare
reform may impact DCFS?
If welfare reform's outcome is
families working, then we'll be in
34/ December 1997 Illinois Issues
better shape. So far, our caseloads
remain Hat. Frankly, our caseloads are
under control for the first time in two
years. We've not seen any impact yet
from welfare reform, but I think the
jury is out on that everywhere in the
country.
Q. What brought about that
flat caseload rate?
A couple of basic changes. One,
Illinois has probably the most expensive foster care system on a per capita
basis. The reason for that was that
children would come into the system
and stay in the system. Some families
were coming in who didn't need to be
in. A specific example are children living with relatives. People would come
in because you would get better benefits in the child welfare system than
you would somewhere else. This was a
fairly significant part of our intake.
And this was a part of the system that
was growing at rates of 20, 30 and 40
percent a year.
The other thing that happened was
that in the '80s there were major
efforts to reunify children with their
families as quickly as possible. In the
'90s, with the tragedies that happened,
people stopped reunifications. Reunification rates dropped from about 35
percent of the kids going home in the
first year of foster care in the '80s to
less than 5 percent going home in the
first year of foster care in the '90s. No
one wanted to be the worker, the
judge, the state's attorney, the public
guardian responsible for the tragedy of
a child going home and being injured
or killed. The court system was
gripped by fear. You don't return
children home when you don't know
what you're doing. And you shouldn't.
Safety has to be the number one
responsibility in every decision we
make, and there have been clear cases
in the past when that principle was not
respected.
We made changes about three years
ago after I first came in. We just said,
"If you've been living with a relative
for a long time, that does not
constitute abuse or neglect." And that
change has been very positive. It's
allowed us to focus our limited
resources on those cases where children are clearly abused and severely
neglected. And that's what we should
be doing.
Q. You started your career as a
DCFS caseworker. What has
that given you in this job?
Actually, that kind of experience is
invaluable. I at least have a sense of
what conditions are like in the field. I
acknowledge that things have changed
a lot since I was a caseworker. They've
changed a great deal. Pressures on
people in the field now are greater. The
workloads are far better, but with the
changes in the workload has been the
expectation that people do more.
Expectations from the federal and
state governments have significantly
increased.
On the other hand, I've carried a
case. I've done investigations. I've
done the work so I do have a sense of
what it takes. And it gives you a good
gut check on the kinds of programs or
proposals you see and whether or not
they make any sense. You just have to
have that experience I think.
Q. Expectations are greater.
How does that come about? Is
that pressure from society?
I think it's a combination of things.
One is that as litigation created expectations for change, change created
pressure for more resources. As we got
more resources, the General Assembly,
the governor's office and people
started paying more attention to what
we are getting for these investments.
The major question I know I was
facing coming in was, "Where does
this money go? What are we getting for
it?"
Leadership in government is clear
that they don't mind investing in child
welfare. That's not the issue. They
want to know if they're getting the
right outcomes. Are they getting adoptions?
Are kids going home safely?
Are kids in care getting treated well?
Virtually everybody's asking for the
same set of outcomes. They're not
interested in seeing a system that drifts
forever, keeping kids in foster care at
the expense of finding them a permanent home.
This last session the governor's
office led an effort, a bipartisan effort,
to reform Illinois' child welfare laws,
the basic laws [regarding] the time it
took to look at terminating parental
rights. And the expectation that things
would happen quickly in court. All of
that was looked at very carefully and
changed. And that's going to mean
more changes in the field. Staff is
going to have to work harder and
faster. The notion is if they work fast
and work well with families and public
guardians around the state, we'll be
able to make better, safer and quicker
decisions that result in permanent
options for kids.
Q. Have our expectations
changed as far as what we believe
the state is responsible for? Like
when to step in?
People are looking at it more, but I
don't think we've reached any conclusion. We're often criticized for moving
too quickly. On the other hand, there's
always the case where we hear, "Why
didn't you act?" For every case, there is
someone on both sides of the issue. I
think expectations reflect the wide
diversity of opinions about how
children should be served.
People want to believe every family
can be saved, but we know that's not
the case. I've asked people to put
themselves in the shoes, if you will, of
the people in the field. We ask the
people in the field, who generally have
limited knowledge and experience, to
go into a home and make two perfect
decisions. One, whether there's abuse
and neglect or not. And then we're
asking them to make a couple other
decisions, the most important being
whether or not the child needs to be
removed from the family in order to
Illinois Issues December 1997 /35
protect the child. And no matter what
choice you make, it will cause problems. I think we ask a lot of people in
the field, and I don't think people truly
understand what it is we're asking them
to do.
The movement toward community
partnerships, bringing everyone around
the table to work with us, and the
movement toward accreditation —
these are strategies intended to give
every community a high quality child
protection system. It's not something
you do once and then forget about.
The child welfare system is like
walking through the waves of the
Pacific. Never turn your
back. If you're not constantly vigilant, something can happen that
can just take you under.
It's easy to slip back and
find ourselves in trouble
again.
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There was a time, I
think, when this department was culpable in
having enemies. We
circled the wagons
tightly and fast. What
we failed to do was
allow all our natural
partners — the community, churches, private agencies
— the opportunity to work with us.
Without those partnerships, there is no
possible way for this agency to succeed
in its mission. Without those partnerships, there's not a chance that this
agency can do right by children and
families in this state.
If there's anything we've achieved the
last three years, it's to bring people to
the table and begin the process of solving these problems together. It has not
been easy. At times, it has not been
pretty, but what I've found is a clear
dedication among everyone to try and
solve these problems that have been
around for hundreds of years.
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We all suspect that abuse and neglect
of children will be around through the
next century at least, although we hope
that we can work ourselves out of a
job. Until that day comes, we have to
make sure we're doing it right.
Q. So you don't think that
children will always die?
I don't think we should ever expect
that of a child who's had any involvement with the child welfare system.
Our expectation should be that when
that child returns home, he will live a
safe, normal and happy life. To the
extent that doesn't happen, we have to
examine everything about the system
that might have contributed to the
wrong outcome.
Children do die of abuse and neglect.
We're not involved in most of those
cases. Those are cases we've never seen
before. What about those children? In
the long run, it's really the health of
our communities and the families who
live in them that's going to make the
difference.
I refer to DCFS as the barometer
or measure of the health of any
community. If your child welfare
agency has a large presence in your
community, that means there's something wrong with your community.
The problem is not with the child
welfare agency. The problem is the
community.
Q. So, where's the answer? Who
can solve that problem?
Three years ago, someone asked me
what would be the single major change
I could make that might have a big payoff. I'm still convinced it's that every
child needs to graduate from high
school. To the extent that kids drop
out, they're on an early track to failure.
They're less prepared to deal with the
responsibilities of the world of work,
and they're less prepared to be parents.
And, all too often, they become parents too early in life. No child should
be allowed to drop out of high school.
That change alone, in my view, would
make a significant difference. I don't
think that's going to happen easily
either. Unfortunately, there's no one
silver bullet. Everything is related to
everything else.
Q. Aren't there things
that you can point to
that correspond to the
growth in your agency?
If you're going to track it
to anything, track it to
poverty. The communities
where we have the highest
demand are also the ones
with the highest dropout
rates, the highest unemployment rates, the highest
poverty rates.
Q. What advice
would you give the next DCFS
director?
I'd say, "Find your solutions in the
community. Build strong partnerships
and maintain them. Make quality and
accountability your top internal agenda. And always be looking over your
shoulder at the system. Never turn your
back on the system."
36/ December 1997 Illinois Issues