CHICAGO (WMBD) — The Governor’s Office announced Friday a new online dashboard for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services which they hope will promote accountability and transparency.
The Illinois Child Welfare Insights Tool will allow residents, child welfare advocates and the families receiving these services have near real-time access to information used by DCFS administrators, including:
- The number of reports of abuse and neglect filed with the agency and how quickly DCFS staff responded.
- Percentages of youth under DCFS care who have met with medical teams or enrolled in development programs.
- Engagement activities, including a breakdown of how often and the means used by caseworkers to interact with families served by the department.
Data is updated daily and can be viewed at the county or state level, spanning the past 30 days or the past 12 months. It is available at https://dcfs.illinois.gov.
Gov. JB Pritzker said it was his intention that the “Insights Tool will serve as a resource for those who have a genuine interest in learning more about this tremendous operation that impacts thousands of children and families.”
DCFS will also partner with the Center for Innovation in Population Health (IPH Center) at the University of Kentucky to do a systems-focused study of its Child Protection Services.
The project team, led by Michael Cull, PhD at the IPH Center, will be supported by Richard Epstein from at Northwestern University, and Tamara Fuller from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The study is expected to take approximately 24 months to complete, with recommendations provided to DCFS throughout this timeframe to ensure immediate action can be taken where necessary.
The overarching frame for the review is informed by Safety Science, which is a framework used in other safety-critical industries, like aviation and healthcare, to change organizational culture, improve practice, and reduce frequency of tragic outcomes and improved public safety.
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