2020
“We’ve replaced personnel. We put in new policies and procedures. And, very importantly, we have outside advisors and monitors that are helping us to figure out what more needs to be done.Because this is maybe the important thing that government does it protect the most vulnerable people, the defenseless people in our society and the kids who are in the DCFS system, as well as the many who don’t get identified to DCFS.” – Governor Pritzker, January 2020
Fast forward 3 years.
2023
Chicago Tribune: Marc Smith, head of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s embattled child welfare agency, announces resignation
“Marc Smith was appointed to director of the state’s Department of Children and Family Services by Gov. J.B. Pritzker shortly after the governor took office in 2019. The announcement of Smith’s impending departure comes a little more than a week after the state’s auditor general issued a scathing report on the agency that among other things cited significant delays in reporting abuse and neglect to local prosecutors, other state agencies and to officials at children’s schools.”
We wonder what irrevocable damage to Illinois and individual crime victims will be as apparent as his DCFS failure now is when 3 years from now, we look back on Governor Pritzker’s signing of the [Un]SAFE-T Act.
