Thread: Wanted: Spanish speakers as foster parents

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Wanted: Spanish speakers as foster parents
Decades after lawsuit, DCFS shortages persist


By Ofelia Casillas
Tribune staff reporter

May 7, 2006

Thirty years after the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services promised a federal judge that it would find more Spanish-speaking foster parents and abuse investigators, the agency faces a chronic shortage of caretakers and employees for the state's burgeoning Latino population.

In a recent case, the shortage forced a 5-year-old Mexican girl to point and pantomime to communicate with her Des Plaines foster mother.

Child abuse investigators, unable to interview critical witnesses, struggle to understand whether abuse has occurred in some homes, and some parents have been forced to wait for court-mandated counseling to regain custody of their children because of a lack of Spanish-speaking therapists.

Although the number of children -- including Spanish- speaking children -- in state care has been declining recently, the state has been unable to solve the language problem.

DCFS records show that since 2001, the number of Spanish-speaking employees dropped from 221 to 174, leaving some Latino children unable to communicate with those who care for them.

Of 1,368 private agency caseworkers, only 83 had a Spanish-language ability.

In 2005, the agency was responsible for 1,165 children identified as Latino but had only 236 Spanish-speaking foster homes, according to a report by the Latino Consortium, a group of child welfare providers.

The problem recently has become most acute Downstate and in southern Cook County, areas where caseloads involving Hispanic children are growing fast but few Spanish-speaking foster families are available.

"There are still problems. There are still big egregious problems. It's outrageous," Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris said. "It just shows that we haven't necessarily progressed to the extent that we say we have as a child welfare system. Basic issues that have been litigated 30 years ago tend to crop up."

No language, no nurturing

Months after coming to Chicago from Mexico, a 5-year-old girl disclosed sexual abuse by her father, and DCFS took custody of her and her younger brother and sister.

After a few days at an emergency youth shelter, DCFS moved the children to the home of a foster mother who did not speak Spanish. The girl called the woman "la senora," or "the lady" because the girl never even understood her name.

"A language barrier exists. ... She would find it difficult to be able to express herself, be understood as well as comforted," a DCFS worker wrote in a January assessment. "The truth is [she] needs a primary caregiver that she can communicate with freely in an effort to have both her basic needs and emotional needs met."

The private agency handling the children's cases wrote up a plan to "nurture the language and culture" of the children while in the home.

"Mexican TV and music will be seen and heard in the foster home," read the plan, dated Jan. 13. "Foster parent has said that she has a couple of friends and family members that speak Spanish. She will ensure that these friends and family members visit."

Still, even as the girl was polite, obedient and affectionate, the foster mother said that what she found most difficult about caring for the girl was seeing her struggle to communicate.

"She wants me to understand what she is saying," the foster mother told workers.

Officials moved the girl and her two younger siblings to a Spanish-speaking foster home in Grayslake 65 days later.

Child welfare experts identified other troubling cases.

In a residential facility, an isolated teenage girl who spoke Spanish could find no other youths or staff members to talk to. It took months to find a Spanish-speaking therapist for a 16-year-old boy and his father.

DCFS promised to fix such problems in 1977 when it settled a lawsuit filed by Leopoldo and Iris Burgos. That settlement is known as the Burgos consent decree.

The Puerto Rican couple alleged that they became estranged from their children after the children spent years in English-speaking foster homes and forgot their native language.

DCFS officials declined to answer specific questions for this story.

Last fall, however, a DCFS spokeswoman acknowledged to the Tribune in an e-mail that the system needs more Spanish-speaking foster parents to care for older youths and parenting teens. She said the department also needs Spanish-speaking foster parents Downstate.

In a letter accompanying recent data, a DCFS official wrote that the Burgos consent decree "remains a high priority for the department."

In 1996 the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund was given the job of filing complaints about Burgos violations in federal court. But some child welfare officials said the group has lacked initiative in pressuring DCFS to comply.

"MALDEF used to be a key player, [then] they are on the sidelines, and now they look like they are out of the ballpark," said Luis Barrios, DCFS chief of Latino Services until 2002. "I don't think they have been that effective."

Ricardo Meza, who became the fund's Midwest regional counsel seven months ago, declined to discuss past enforcement of the decree.

"I can only try to pick up the ball where I found it and move it forward," Meza said. "The first thing I have to do is find out whether or not they are in compliance. I see no reason why after 30 years they shouldn't be."

Tension among DCFS workers

When asked for Burgos violations in recent years, DCFS officials said the fund had not complained of any.

"The court did not find any violation of the consent decree of any kind in any region of the state," DCFS officials said in a written response.

Federal documents and interviews with child welfare experts help explain why the child welfare system has struggled to comply with the decree.

Court filings from the 1970s through 1997 show the same concerns popping up, over and over: Bilingual staffing "continues to be a serious problem," and Spanish-speaking foster homes "continue to be scarce."

An attorney hired by DCFS in 1990 tied these problem to racial tensions.

"A tension exists within DCFS between non-Hispanic and Hispanic workers. In particular, there is an indication of an acute tension between African-American and Hispanic DCFS workers," the attorney reported to DCFS.

In 1991, a court monitor concluded: "The decree was seen by managers as a mere nuisance and still others viewed it as special treatment for DCFS' Spanish-speaking clientele."

Part of the problem, according to court records, may be the agency's indifference.

"Many non-bilingual DCFS staff remain largely unaffected by and non-invested in ensuring Burgos requirements are met," wrote a court-appointed monitor in a 1997 report.

Eight years later, a study by the Latino Consortium found more of the same: a shortage of bilingual foster homes for sibling groups and teenagers, a lack of bilingual social workers and investigators and a struggle with bilingual cases.

The report found that a much higher proportion of Latino parents lost rights to their children than got their children back from foster care.

"Sometimes services are not available in Spanish," said Maria Ayala, a coordinator at the Latino Consortium. "A long waiting list may put that parent in trouble in front of a judge."

Consortium co-chairman Miguel Palacio said problems remain.

"Those issues become exacerbated; they are intensified [with] the recent burgeoning of the Latino population."

`Never really in compliance'

Former top DCFS deputy directors said that despite the department's best efforts to hire and recruit Spanish-speaking workers, the agency was never in full compliance with Burgos.

"I never, never, never filled [all] the Spanish-speaking positions," said John Goad, who served as deputy chief of child protection for DCFS until 2003. "As a result, we were never really in compliance with the consent decree."

Jerry Slomka, deputy director of operations until 2003, said the shortage of Spanish-speaking workers went hand-in-hand with a lack of bilingual foster homes.

"It was kind of referred to as a conundrum," Slomka said. "It was something that we struggled with."

As a response to that shortage, Latino child welfare providers are launching their first joint recruitment campaign to bring in more foster parents and encourage youth to become social workers.

"The tragedy of a child being removed from their parents and placed into a home where they do not have the culture and the language of their parents and then losing the ability to be reunited with that parent is precisely against the purposes of the whole child welfare system," said Diane Redleaf, who was lead counsel for 10 years on the Burgos decree at the Legal Assistance Foundation.

"So it's really a fundamental problem. It's not just a lawsuit or a technical requirement. It's really a basic requirement."

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ocasillas@tribune.com

So now were paying taxes to make sure anchor babies don't assimilate?

Services offered in the US and paid for by taxpayers should NEVER be written or translated into any other language.

I cannot believe a court let that law suit get threw in 1977! Those kids spent their lives in foster care, the parents unfit all those years. And they would fall for a law suit that says the language the child was taught to speak alienated the parents? Grrrr

Hi!
I'm just responding to this article because I know about this case. Becausse this case was about me when I was in Forster care. Small world . I think that DCFS should leave the children with people who care for them. Children learn very quickly and they can learn a secound languge.
olgie