Content warning: Graphic descriptions of physical and sexual abuse
In February, the state’s auditor general reported that the Illinois DCFS failed in myriad ways to adequately care for LBGTQ+ kids. The report found “a lack of reliable and consistent information regarding LGBTQ youth in the care of the department” and “a lack of monitoring and oversight of private agency compliance” with its policies and procedures related to LGBTQ+ youth.
“The number of LGBTQ youth in care provided by the department is only a fraction of the possible population as predicted using available literature,” the report states. “Therefore, any comparisons between these youth and all youth in care may be skewed and inaccurate.”
“Largely, their identities are ignored,” Guidetti said of LGBTQ+ youth in DCFS care. “There’s no system-wide ability to collect information about young people’s sexual orientation, or gender identity. There’s then completely inadequate training just to develop cultural competence around working with LGBTQ+ youth.”
A DCFS spokesperson tells the Reader that a unit within the agency is also tasked with monitoring residential treatment facilities with which the agency contracts.
She says that over the roughly two and a half years she spent there in the early 2010s, agency staff largely ignored her complaints, documenting them but never following up. She says it was likely because some of those complaints focused on staff members themselves. She recalled one instance where a staff member cornered her in a stairwell and threatened to assault her for filing a complaint about him months earlier about a previous threat.
