Springfield – Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday signed a bill with the aim of making it easier for children’s relatives in state care, to obtain licenses as foster parents and to get financial assistance, a law advocates say That Illinois can help thousands of families and children.
At the signature ceremony at Illinois State Capital, Pritzkar said, “Wherever possible, a family member who already knows and loves can provide stability and familiarity, and most often for a child at least for a child He leads to low disruption and trauma. ” By MPs and other Backers of Bill. “Research proves this. In care, living with young, relatives, dramatically improves mental health results, educational attainment, social work, child happiness and list moves forward. ,
Heidi Muller, who marked his first year as director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services in the weekend, said the new law has special significance for him.
He said that when his mother was a little girl, how did his grandmother die of cancer, and that his grandfather was also competing with his own grief and the family farm struggled to take care of his daughter Was managing. Therefore, Muller said, his mother was taken by her aunt, even though the woman was a widow and was picking her daughter by herself.
“In doing so, he taught my mother a truly powerful lesson about love, about sacrifice, about each other, about mutual responsibility, and my mother gave those lessons from me to me Passed, and those lessons took me here.
Measures signed by the governor, which received bilateral support on passing through the General Assembly, encourages children’s relatives in DCFS, non-family as an alternative for children to maintain a house for those children Members are being kept in spinach care with. The new law requires DCFS, who is looking for federal funds to start a “kinship navigator program” to assist the relatives that are caring for the agency and increase financial assistance to the relatives.
According to the American Civil Liberty Union of Illinois, who pushed for measurement, more than 10,000 children live with relatives in DCFS, but more than 60% of these careful carefuls have the needed spinach care benefits to take care of a youth Are deprived, which are being kept in a youth. Domestic because the state law requires them to meet complex standards that were imposed decades ago.
Muller said that last Saturday had a one -year anniversary as the head of the agency, which has been criticized by MPs and others for years, including how it has misbehaved and neglect children in agency care Has handled the allegations of Muller said that emphasizing this law is one of the things he is proud of the most in the office during his early years.
The law is effective on 1 July. The purpose of its provisions improves support for relatives raising children in the DCFS system by equaling payment to relatives with the rate provided to traditional foster parents; Help youth in state care to maintain relationships with their families; Sewing services and kinship support families; And it is not possible to treat adoption and preservativeness as equally viable alternatives when there is re -reconciliation with parents.
Zeenat Bird, a careful for his two grandchildren, used to talk about the importance of law and how “kinship is taking information of carers and we need and worth it in Illinois.”
“It is greatly pleased to take care of me and a new sense of purpose,” Bird told reporters about being a relative career. “Although I sometimes look at myself like ‘what did I do myself?” But they climb on my lap, they hug me and tell me that they love me, and this makes me know that everything is going to be fine.