Mary Lee Leahy ---lawyer, environmentalist, politician, agency director
This article presents an introductory biographical sketch of Mrs. Leahy followed by an interview with her focusing on the problems and challenges of the Department of Children and Family Services

THE WOMAN appointed by Gov. Dan Walker to stabilize one of his most troubled code agencies has been a principal in several of the most crucial and complex events of recent Illinois political history. Mary Lee Leahy, 34, was named director of the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) on August 14, 1974, replacing Dr. Jerome Miller. Mrs. Leahy was well known to the public before she was assigned to pull together the agency, but it is hard to say which of her previous activities gained her the most prominence.

In 1972 she and her lawyer husband, Andrew, served as two of the counsel to Chicago Alderman William S. Singer's delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Mayor Daley's contingent was unseated by Singer's independent Democratic group and the Leahys were part of the legal team that argued the case. Ultimately the case was decided successfully before the U.S. Supreme Court. The struggle, which gained her a lot of press coverage but no influence with the state's regular Democratic organization, is not mentioned in Mrs. Leahy's official biographical sketch.

What is highlighted in the sketch is her role as a Constitutional Convention delegate in 1970. After winning a close race for a convention seat against an organization Democrat, Mrs. Leahy became the prime mover in the effort to include an environmental rights article in the Constitution. She argued that "unless we solve the problems of the environment, we won't be around in fifty years to see the results of the solutions to other problems." Mrs. Leahy was named the outstanding woman in intercollegiate debate in 1962 by the Saturday Evening Post, and her disputational ability was powerful enough to gain the convention's acceptance of the environmental article.

After the convention, Mrs. Leahy ran for alderman in the 7th Ward of Chicago against Republican incumbent Nicholas Bohling. With some help across party lines from the regular Democratic organization, Bohling defeated Mrs. Leahy in a close race. Mrs. Leahy says, "People say that their votes don't count, but I know personally that one vote can make the difference between winning and losing." Bohling won by about one vote per precinct, which was exactly the margin Mrs. Leahy won by in the Constitutional Convention race.

The expertise on environmental matters she displayed at "Con Con," and her independent Democratic stance, led to her appointment by Gov. Walker as director of the state Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in January 1973.

But in the minds of the Daley Democrats in the Senate Mrs. Leahy's environmental acumen was cancelled out by her independent Democratic affiliations. Thirty votes are required for the 59-member Senate to confirm an appointment, and Mrs. Leahy got only 18 votes when her name came up (4/26/73). All but a few Chicago Democrats and many Republicans sat silent, and so after four months as head of EPA, Mrs. Leahy was out. Until her appointment as director of DCFS in August of 1974, Mrs. Leahy served as liaison for the governor with a number of code departments. The Leahys have lived in Springfield with their two daughters, Anna Marie, 9, and Bridget, 7, since the beginning of the Walker administration.

Mrs. Leahy was awarded a B.A. in history in 1962, graduating first in her class of 2,000 from Loyola University in Chicago. She was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Manchester in England where she received her M.A. in political science in 1963. After earning her law degree from the University of

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Chicago in 1966, she practiced law in Chicago and successfully argued cases affirming the constitutional rights of public employees.

At the conclusion of the following interview with Mrs. Leahy she explained to me that the plaque behind her desk was a reproduction of the court decision of one of these cases, McLaughlin vs Tilendis, the case that established the constitutional right of public employees to organize for collective bargaining.

Mrs. Leahy's responses to my questions were rapid and precise. One gets the feeling in talking to her that there is little wasted energy in her activities, that she maximizes her effort in whatever she does. She is a petite women physically, but her speech and accompanying gestures are quite forceful and assured. The following interview, which focuses largely on DCFS, was conducted February 7 in Mrs. Leahy's office in Springfield.

Q: How would you describe the administrative environment of the Walker administration? How much discretion do code agency heads have? What is the mood, the tempo, the communications, etc.?
A: From my experience, directors have just an enormous amount of discretion. Although I'm not too familiar with prior administrations, I don't think this was the predominant tone with them. The directors reach an overall agreement with Gov. Walker on goals, so that the objectives that I have set forth for this department really constitute an agreement between myself and the governor.

Q: You did that when you started — when you took over the agency?
A: Well, it took me a little time, and I inherited the foundations for some of them, but in terms of being told to do something, no, I've never had that experience.

Q: How about contact with the governor? Are communications easy?
A: Oh yes, incredible, I think. When 1 was in the governor's office and I felt that something was important enough to bring to the governor's attention, there wasn't a time when I could not talk to him immediately ---no matter where he was.

Q: Can you give an idea of the size of DCFS operations? What is the total number of foster children?
A: The approximate number of children in our custody or guardianship is presently just under 28,000 children; 11,000 of those 28,000 are in foster care. About 3,000 of the 28,000 children are in institutional placement and there are about 1,200 in the Independent Living Program.

Q: How are children and families referred to the department?
A: There are many ways in which family problems and potential or actual child abuse and neglect situations are brought to our attention. Cases are referred by police, school officials, relatives, neighbors, doctors and medical personnel, and public aid workers.

Of course, besides helping family and children in their own home or with some type of substitute care, we also operate a number of programs for the physically handicapped. These range from the state home for veterans, their wives or widows, to counseling and instruction of blind persons in their own homes. We also operate the state schools for blind, deaf and crippled children. These schools serve children whose handicap is such that they cannot receive an adequate education in regular schools.

Q: How are handicapped children referred to these programs?
A: There are eligibility requirements, and parents apply just like they would apply to any school. Of course, application is not made until the local school indicates it does not have the necessary program. Our area offices also refer children and other departments refer children. There are a multitude of entry points.

Q: What is the size of your staff now?
A: I think it is just between 3,100 and 3,200, about half in the institutional area and the other half in the child welfare area. We do have a couple of other programs which don't fall into either category. One is our funding of day-care activities through the Office of Child Development, an office within this department. We also license all child welfare agencies, foster homes, all adoptive homes, all day-care centers, day-care homes, all group homes — in all of these areas we have the licensing responsibility.

Q: How would you characterize the morale in DCFS right now?
A: I sense it varies from area office to area office. I think our morale downstate is coming around. I think that we have seen some problems get solved in the last couple of months. I'm not so sure about Cook County, but I hope within the next few months that it will begin to turn around too. There; are particular problems in Cook County that 1 think need to be solved, but I'm not so sure that it isn't just sheer size that makes those problems inevitable. I think we've pinpointed some problem now. We're going to make a real intensive effort in Cook County.

Q: This leads to a further question. I just read your statement in the latest Illinois Welfare Association News(Jan. 1975) where you outline three major areas of activity for DCFS, namely reorganization of the central office, regulation revision and payment of private agencies. Was the reorganizalion of the central office related to the morale problem?
A: Yes. I think there was a kind of game going on. You had a problem out there in an area; you called various people and may not have always gotten the same answer. What I've tried to do is to identify those persons responsible for particular areas. For example, I have appointed one person to be responsible for tracing late payments and the reasons why, etc. Now we've gotten the word out to the areas and everybody calls this individual with late payment problems. This is the kind of thing that I was attempting to do regarding central reorganization: identify person responsible. I have also created the Division of Planning, Research and Evaluation to work on this kind of problem.

Q: What new programs are underway in DCFS?
- A: There is the Subsidized Adoption Program. It enables people who never thought they could adopt to do so, and it also enables children who couldn't be adopted before to be adopted. A good example would be a child that has a lot of physical handicaps and may need extensive surgery right up to the time the child is 21. The department can agree to pick up that medical expense. Many, many families just could not take on a child that would have thousands and thousands of dollars of medical expenses.

Q: How many adoptions is the department involved in each year, roughly?
A: I believe the total last year was over 1,200. But we have a lot ofchildren available for adoption. We do not have infants available for adoption, but we have a lot of older children available,

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handicapped children available, minority children available for adoption. The department has made the decision that in some cases brothers and sisters must not be separated, so we have children available for adoption if you take them in twos and threes.

Q: Even in threes?
A: Yes. 1 think the other day we had a case where it was six.

Q: Let me just change the pace here and ask a different kind of question. Has your legal training been valuable at the agency?
A: If you think about the fact that 80 per cent of the 28,000 children come to us by court order, and if you consider the kinds of issues that are involved in that — well, I'm constantly working with legal matters. We sign well over a hundred contracts with private residential agencies, and we're going to be getting into contract negotiations around the programs with those agencies, and there the legal experience is invaluable. I also think that if a lawyer is well trained, language and the meaning of language become very important, and I have found that very helpful. There is a different language many times in the social work field. To give you an example, I have found out that when a social worker says, "I suggest," it is a polite way of saying, "Do it." When a lawyer says, "I suggest," he or she usually means, "You can do it or you don't have to take my advice." I have tried to understand their language and make my own clearer.

Q: Many authorities on social services believe the longer the child is in an institution the more likely he is to stay there. Do you accept this theory?
A: Let me back up. The department's primary goal must be to give children as permanent and homelike a setting as we can. When the department intervenes it's at the time of crisis, and we should try very hard to keep the family together during that time of crisis. Homemaker's services, day care for the kids, a big brother or big sister — you know, support, counseling, whatever. If the child must be removed, we have to look at what this child needs right now, what's best for him. For some children institutionalization is what they need at that point in time. We ought to be very clear that (and this is something that I have just put into new contracts) when we ask an agency to take a particular child into its institution there must be a plan, an agreement worked out around that child in that agency, so that the case is reviewed, say, every 90 days to see how far along the child is. I'm trying to put together information on how long children are staying in institutions because I think this is much more meaningful than the gross number of institutionalized children. If you've got 3,000 children in institutions, but their average length of stay is two months, that's very different from 3,000 children whose average length of stay is 18 months.

'When a social worker says, "I suggest," it is a polite way of saying, "Do it." When a lawyer says, "I suggest," he or she usually means, "You can do it or you don't have to take my advice." I have tried to understand their language and make my own clearer'

Q: What is the present availability of foster homes in Illinois?
A: We are actively seeking them in certain categories. I don't think there's an area in the state that doesn't have a need for specialized foster parents — people who will take on troubled teenagers or physically handicapped or mentally retarded children. Unless these specialized foster parents are available, those children more than likely will remain institutionalized because there is no alternative.

Q: How would someone who was willing to be a foster parent to a teenager or somebody who is handicapped get in contact with your agency to offer this service, or to see if they were suitable?
A: Just look up the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services in the phone book and call up [offices are located in over 70 cities].

Q: What would you say is the next major task for DCFS?
A: I'd like to see us move a lot more of our children into permanency. What has happened is that foster care for a lot of children which should be temporary has become permanent, de facto, and yet these children don't have the security of an officially permanent situation.

Q: Do you think there's a good chance for you to make a dent in this problem and actually lower the number
of children on the rolls?
A: I think so. Some of the areas are proving they can do it. One of our areas, for example, is spending 55 per cent of their time in service to children in their own homes. Now that means they are really providing the kind of supportive services to prevent the child from being taken out to start with. That's one way. The other way is to accelerate the placement of the children who are already available for adoption. But if the economy worsens, I think the disintegration of families will worsen, and therefore our case load may shoot way up.

Q: Mrs. Leahy, if you had the opportunity to tell every citizen of Illinois one thing about DCFS and what it does, what would that one thing be?
A: Well, what I'd like to say is that these children, all 28,000, belong to all of us. All too often this department has been seen as all things to all children. I'll give you an example. In one area, a school official said to me, "I had a very disturbed girl in school and I called your department and your department didn't do anything about her." Maybe we were wrong, I won't go into that, but 1 said, "What did you do about her then?" And he said, "1 had called your department — it was your responsibility." I hope to develop a planning process that will see that this responsibility is spread over the school system, the local police departments, and the medical profession. I would hope that no doctor or no dentist in this state refuses to serve one of these 28,000 children because he thinks the forms are too difficult to fill out to get payment. We've got to begin to accept the fact that these children, all of them, are the responsibility of all of us. 

NOTE: For a summary of the 1976 budget for the Department of Children and Family Services, see "1976 budget: Spending to top $8 billion, zero ending balance," page 148.

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