Book Review                                             

Illinois has floundered over
child welfare policies since statehood

By STERLING M. RYDER

Joan Gittens. Poor Relations: The Children of the State in Illinois, 1818-1990. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Pp. 295 with notes, bibliographic essay and index. $49.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

People concerned about the role of government in the lives of children who are abused, neglected, delinquent or disabled should put aside their biases, clear their minds and spend a few hours reading Poor Relations. Ostensibly written as history, this book speaks powerfully and persuasively to child welfare issues now facing Illinois and the nation. Without the understanding such a work provides, the passion and commitment brought by politicians, child advocates and the public to these issues is too often wasted, if not downright harmful.

Joan Gittens, who now teaches college history in Minnesota, spent 10 years studying the Illinois child welfare system. This book is evidence that her time was well invested. Poor Relations is divided into three parts, treating Illinois' history with regard to its dependent children, delinquents and handicapped children. Gittens shows how Illinois' policies and practices over nearly two centuries have often blurred these neat categories, as when neglected children totally dependent on the state for support are treated like children who have broken the law. Perhaps an even clearer example of category confusion affected the state's mentally ill children (or "defectives," as they were called) who were institutionalized during much of this century in settings worse than jails or prisons.

Photo courtesy of Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield

The Springfield Home For The Friendless, an orphanage, was opened in 1863. The Board of Managers, established by an act of the legislature, included prominent individuals from Lincoln's hometown. Since statehood, Illinoisans have wrestled with the choice of caring for dependent children in their own families with additional state support, or placing them in substitute families or institutions.

The history of dependent children, who today are usually referred to as abused and neglected, reveals in painful detail how Illinois has floundered since statehood among a limited set of policy options without clear direction. The choice between caring for such children in their own families with additional state support, or placing them in either substitute families or institutions, is shown by Gittens to be complex in both human and social terms. The decision is made even more difficult since it is often guided by laws that are ambiguous at best, tragically harmful at worst. In general, the art of legislative compromise and the proliferation of "common sense" solutions on which hypocritical zealots can congratulate themselves have not proven helpful for children, unfortunately.

The alert reader will find much here that bears on the heated discussion of welfare reform today. While some Illinoisans are aware of the establishment of the nation's first Juvenile Court in Chicago in 1899 (a subject that is covered nicely in the second part of Gittens' book), few know that in 1911 Illinois became the first state to follow up on Theodore Roosevelt's admonition that "preservation of families should be the main objective of social policy" by establishing the "mothers' pension" program. This program was later adopted by most states and enacted in the federal Social Security Act as Aid to Dependent Children.

The original Illinois mothers' pensions were payments to either parent so poor children could remain at home. The debate over the mothers' pensions early in this century sounds like the debate currently raging around Aid to Families with Dependent Children in the states and the Congress. The correlation of poverty with child abuse and neglect has been clearly established. The failed promise of AFDC is one of several examples cited in the book to demonstrate the harm that results from historic underfunding of such well-intended social programs.

"Not only recently, but consistently throughout its history, the state has underfunded, underbuilt, and undertaxed in regard to children's needs, with the result that its programs are often so inadequate as to constitute downright neglect," says Gittens. In the midst of an excellent history of the short and unhappy life of the Department of Children and Family Services, established in 1964, she points out that state legislative and executive branch leaders have responded to child welfare tragedies by increasing the level of state intervention in family life through amendments to the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act.

28/March 1995/Illinois Issues

These amendments have expanded the kinds of professional persons required to report suspected abuse or neglect; the definitions of abuse and neglect have been broadened to sweep more children into the system; and the persons who must be investigated by DCFS now include teachers as well as parents and other caretakers. This ever-expanding departmental jurisdiction has led inevitably to state intervention in the lives of some families when it was not appropriate. While thus wasting part of its resources playing Big Brother unnecessarily, DCFS has been placed in the untenable position of lacking adequate staff and funds to focus on very real problems, sometimes with disastrous consequences that only reinforce the argument for additional intervention.

A theme common to both the dependency and the delinquency sections of Poor Relations is the depressingly repetitive nature of the problems and the solutions. The record regarding disabled children in Illinois is in some ways even more troubling to read. The historic impact of Social Darwinism on the provision of services for mentally ill and deaf children shows that such a philosophy as practiced by adult amateurs can be dangerous indeed. Yet, Illinois has probably improved its care of these children more than its care of dependent or delinquent children as we near the end of the century. The author attributes this at least in part to the fact that disabilities cut across all income levels and social classes. The parents of disabled children have pursued the best interests of their children with profound effectiveness.

Dependent and delinquent children unfortunately do not often have such parents. Advocates for these children are not lacking, however, and everyone agrees that decisions should be made in their best interests. Joan Gittens' fine study shows that for nearly 200 years Illinoisans have been unable to agree on what those best interests are, and even if such consensus could be achieved, there is little hope that the state would adequately fund the programs to serve those interests.

Sterling M, Ryder is a lawyer who has served as deputy director of the Illinois Legislative Reference Bureau, chief legal advisor of the State Board of Education, chief counsel at the Department of Public Aid and the Department of Children and Family Services, and director of DCFS.