Reflections on Kinship Care

 “According to the Illinois Children and Family Services Act (20 ILCS 505/7), when DCFS takes custody of a child, the Department must make reasonable efforts to find and notify all adult relatives who are ready, willing, and able to care for the child. DCFS should place the child with a relative if that relative can adequately provide for the child’s safety and welfare and it is consistent with the child’s best interests.” https://law.justia.com/codes/illinois/2015/chapter-20/act-20-ilcs-505/?utm_source

Sometimes I think about how the child welfare system is supposed to protect kids, but it doesn’t always protect them from everything. In Illinois, when kids get taken away from their parents, they can be placed with relatives instead of strangers, and on the surface that sounds like a good thing. Being with family feels safer than being with people you don’t know. But just because someone is family doesn’t automatically mean the home is healthy.

I’ve heard real stories around me that make this complicated. A girl in my class, said she got taken from her mom and sent to live with her grandparents. She said it did get her away from the main problem, but the emotional abuse didn’t stop. That stuck with me because people assume “grandparents = safe,” but that’s not always true. Kids can still suffer in quieter ways that don’t leave bruises.

I’ve also seen this in my own family. My uncle and his girlfriend were on drugs and had a baby. The hospital found drugs in the baby’s system, so DCFS got involved. My step-aunt was a certified foster parent, so they placed the baby with her. But she was close to my uncle and his girlfriend and lived less than two miles away. That means there wasn’t much distance from the problem. Later, because of her health issues, she couldn’t keep caring for him. Then he went to my grandmother, who literally lived upstairs from my uncle. Eventually my parents took him in. In the end, my uncle and his girlfriend gave up guardianship because they couldn’t get better.

Watching this happen made me feel like the system tries, but the policies don’t always match real life. Kids get moved around again and again. Family members might love the child but still be connected to the same unhealthy environment. Just placing a child with “any” relative doesn’t guarantee safety or stability.

I believe in DCFS. I even want to work there one day because I want to help kids. I know they have a hard job, and they see the worst situations. But believing in something also means wanting it to improve. A policy that could help is making sure kinship placements (placing kids with relatives) have stronger check-ins and emotional wellbeing evaluations, not just a quick background check. Maybe there should be required counseling for the child and parenting support for the relatives. Maybe there should also be more distance from the original harmful environment when possible.

I’m not saying don’t place kids with family. Family can be the best option. I’m just saying it shouldn’t be automatic without deeper investigation. Kids deserve not just a familiar home, but a healthy one. If the goal is protecting children, then emotional safety should matter as much as physical safety.

Sometimes I think people forget that kids remember everything. They remember the yelling, the instability, the feeling of not knowing where they’ll live next. Policies aren’t just rules on paper they shape real childhoods. And childhood is something you can’t redo.

If I ever work in DCFS, I want to be the kind of worker who looks beyond “good enough” and asks, “Is this truly safe for this child to grow up in?” Because every kid deserves more than just surviving. They deserve peace.

Employment and Disability

In a recent course session I was in, the classroom discussion delved into the topic of disability benefits and work eligibility. A student in class shared their own experiences, highlighting their frustrations, uncertainty, and the financial stress they were facing. Unfortunately, disability programs and policy in the US are not a mainstream topic of discussion within our society, which is structured around the able-bodied experience. However, it is still a key matter, especially with the recent actions and proposed plans by the Trump administration, which center on reducing support for welfare policies.

There is no doubt that, in comparison to the past, progress has been made in disability programs. But there is still work to be done. In the US, disability policy is set counterintuitively; it aims to support those who can’t work consistently, but can simultaneously discourage and disincentivize individuals who try to work, forcing them into a dilemma of facing economic risk. Despite work incentives within disability policies, concerns lie with how frameworks continue to perceive employment and experiencing disability as mutually exclusive, as seen with the complex application processes, complicated reporting requirements, strict income thresholds, and punitive benefit cliffs. Much of our policy seems to encourage staticity, and such rigidity reduces autonomy and control, creates constant concern, and fosters a sense of financial limitations. People with disabilities may reduce/turn down hours or decline certain jobs, as going over certain thresholds may terminate the necessary benefits they are receiving. It's a system that enforces stagnation and essentially punishes the desire to attain economic and social autonomy as a person with disabilities. 

For example, SSDI has a Trial Work Period that allows for nine months of high earnings, but after that, earnings above “substantial gainful activity” may lead to losing benefits. This can cause many individuals to limit themselves to lower-paying jobs or irregular work to avoid completely losing necessary benefits. Similarly, for SSI, every added dollar above the income exclusion threshold reduces benefits by $1 for every $2 earned. Within this, a major stressor for people is maintaining vital medical coverage (such as Medicaid or Medicare). Healthcare is vital for many individuals with disabilities, as it gives people access to life-sustaining and essential care. Making it so healthcare eligibility is rigid, with strict income thresholds, puts people with disabilities in a difficult situation, as they must restrict themselves to continue getting such access to healthcare, cautious of any triggers that would lead to losing such medical support.

Benefits don’t just represent monetary support- they represent access to healthcare, housing stability, and maintaining a good quality of life. The anxieties and fear of losing such support can make the path toward employment seem more like a gamble, not a path toward further independence. On top of all of this, the Trump administration has taken steps and is looking toward eliminating support for vital policies. In 2025, they cut off federal support for the intervention training within the SOAR program, which teaches caseworkers to be adept at navigating the complicated disability application process, and also supplies other important support and resources to their target population of individuals facing homelessness, particularly those experiencing severe mental health illnesses. 

Disability is not a monolithic reality- it can be unpredictable, fluctuate for some people (some days may be better than others), and can be impacted by the environment and factors surrounding the individual. In moving toward a system that truly values independence and supports individuals with disabilities, efforts should focus on reflecting how employment and disability can coexist. As a society, we can move towards universal healthcare, not tied to income/employment or benefits eligibility. There can be steps toward pushing for more gradual benefit tapering and bolstering employment supports, such as with part-time, episodic, or accommodated work. Within all of this, it is vital to make navigating the system of disability programs and policies clearer, simpler, and better communicated. Policy and discussion should revolve around the basis that individuals with disabilities want meaningful activity, autonomy, and stability, grounded in values such as dignity, inclusion, equity, and person-centered support. We can not walk away or allow administration decisions veer away from vital welfare policies and support. The current system can perpetuate a sense of ‘movement as dangerous,’ forcing people to ‘stay still.’ We must reshape this, as support should be a foundation people can safely build upon, where mobility is genuinely supported.

Adoptive Grandparents Need Support

 One issue that has been on my mind for a long time was the lack of supportive care my grandparents had to adopt my four siblings and me. As a kid, I was in and out of foster care from the ages of six to twelve because of being abused and neglected by both my parents and their never-ending stream of partners. Both my mother and father at the time would rather buy drugs and alcohol instead of food for us children. Because of this, we starved. I was malnourished when I was first placed into DCFS. Often, my brothers, sisters and I were only allowed one meal per day and were punished if we got into any food related items in the kitchen. Some meals that I remember eating as a kid consisted of only these items: sugar cubes, canned tuna because we had to feed our cats, fruit loops given to us dry, in the box, in the morning and told to make it last, and most memorable a maggot ham that we had to cut around to eat. Reasons like this were why I often went hungry. I remember being so grateful when school time rolled around because it meant that I got three meals a day. My older brother got caught several times stealing honey buns and pop tarts from the nearby gas station. He got into so much trouble trying to keep us safe and fed. He worried so much about what we were eating next because he understood more than us younger kids what was going on. 

I know I keep rambling on about food, but it is most important to the story because it wasn't the fact that we were malnourished, abused, and smelled like pee and cigarettes every day that caught the school administration’s or DCFS’s attention. The specific situation that got us permanently taken away from our parents happened one morning when my sister woke up yet again, hungry. My mother, being high on drugs, was asleep on the couch. When she was like this it was nearly impossible to wake her up, and when she did wake up, it was crucial to get out of her sight for at least three hours unless we wanted her wrath. My sister tried to wake my mom up for something to eat and she wouldn't budge. So, my sister went back upstairs, only to come back about an hour later to try again but with the same luck only this time she went into the kitchen. She pulled a chair over to the counter to get into the cabinet to see what she could find to eat. She found a sleeve of ritz crackers and began eating them. I guess my mom had heard my sister come downstairs because my mom walked into the kitchen to find my sister eating. She beat my sister for this, probably because she wasn't high anymore and needed to get high. My sister had a phone at the time and ended up calling the police. I don't remember this day at all except for being put into a car in my pajamas and going to the DCFS office. 

After going to several different homes for a few months of my life, I was placed into the care of my paternal grandparents. While I can say that my physical needs were met with my grandparents, I think that the emotional support lacked significantly. See, at my grandparents’ home, we were emotionally abused, called pigs, told to use our brains, called dumb, basically worthless, and most memorable, my grandpa telling my sister to go kill herself and that he would help her do it. I've heard from my family that from the period of my dad and his brothers being children to my siblings and I being children, my grandpa has calmed down a lot. Generational trauma is most certainly present in my family. This makes me terrified to hear the stories of what happened to them as they have never come to light, but also a little confused. My mother and father however, after all the abuse and neglect they gave during their addiction, had to go through a significant list of requirements such as parenting classes, NA meetings, AA meetings, randomized drug tests, randomized house visits, visitations with their children, and so much more I cannot think of. What's most heartbreaking however was that after my mother cleaned up her act and completed all the mandated requirements, more requirements were added. It only continued like this until she was fed up and surrendered her rights as a parent in the state of Illinois. The system was working against her. She lost her children, relapsed, went to prison, and only now is turning herself and her life around. 

What I would like to point out however, is that my grandparents didn't have to take any parenting classes. No required meetings, random drug tests, and most importantly no follow up care for either the parental guardians or the children involved, only the fact that they were our grandparents held up. According to americanbar.org, “kinship caregivers often receive fewer supports than non-relative foster parents”. My grandparents didn't understand what it was like to raise children in today's world, let alone children that have severe trauma from abuse and neglect. They don't believe in mental illness, and they laugh at counseling and say “just pray about it” to almost everything and because of this, I think my siblings and I’s mental illnesses exacerbated more than it should have. I think it is safe to say that as children, we were all angry and mostly towards each other. We took the abuse and it turned into anger. It wasn't until we got placed together with our grandparents that we trauma bonded, leaned on each other, and became each other's best friends. I think the emotional abuse we took from my grandparents had more of an impact on us because we had just come from such a bad situation, thinking it would be better just to find out it's the opposite. We all suffer from depression, but this didn't show up until we all were in the care of my grandparents. What could have prevented it is education. 

I think that DCFS should mandate all guardianships to take a course at least every two years on mental illness. These courses would be created by social workers, either online or in person, to educate guardianships of mental illness, trauma, abuse, neglect, and other related issues children face. I think that a lot of the arguments and disagreements we had growing up with our grandparents involved them not understanding where we were coming from. They didn't understand our food insecurity, our mental states, or the care we needed to become active members of society, so they couldn't help us out at all. These courses could have offered my grandparents some insight into our thinking and ways of doing things. However, it almost seemed like because it was kinship care, DCFS didn't investigate any further into our situation with our grandparents, when they should have especially after our adoption. As stated by sagepub.com, “the majority of previous research has primarily focused on maltreatment that kinship children suffer, often overlooking the complex trauma, including household dysfunctions, that kinship children experience (Winokur et al., 2014). Therefore, expanding the lens from child maltreatment to include the full spectrum of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is needed to better understand children in kinship care’s behavioral problems”. I think there should be DCFS after care for up to 5 years with just 6-month checkups. During said checkups, I think they should privately interview every family member involved to get a greater picture and take any further action that is needed. 

Another useful requirement that could be implemented to help more children is speaking with them individually. A little bit after being placed into the care of my grandparents, I struggled with food insecurity. Hiding, hoarding, and bingeing food was very common, and I was caught one time, the only time I ever got caught because I never did it again. My grandpa caught me eating my cousin's valentine’s day candy that was hidden on top of the fridge, which at the time I didn't know. I was screamed at, grabbed by the back of the neck and thrown into a love seat that we had. What was most scary, however, was not getting grabbed, but being yelled at. Anyways, DCFS doesn't like when children are grabbed and thrown, so word got around and next thing I know I was sitting next to my grandparents with a social worker in front of me asking me, “do you feel safe here” and my response was “yes” even though I disagreed. I would have told them otherwise had I not been sitting next to my grandparent. It just makes me wonder how many maltreatments slip between the cracks like this because a child is scared to sit in the presence of their abuser and admit that what they did had an impact. I'm not sure if it has changed since then, but I think that, not every visit, but maybe once a month, individual meetings should be necessary. Another requirement that I think all guardianships should have mandated to them is counseling. I think that, especially in situations like mine, generational trauma was present and affected us beyond the protection of DCFS. Just like in social work, you can't help people if you don't help yourself first. That applies to guardianship care as well. 

 

 

References

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10634266221076475

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/child_law_practiceonline/child_law_practice/vol30/september_2011/kinship_caregiversreceivefewersupportsthanfosterparents/

Decatur is too car-centric

 Today, Monday, February 2nd, I went to a city council meeting here in Decatur, where I live. I had prepared a two-and-a-half to three-minute speech where I would ask the city council to consider more infrastructure development, as they allow citizens to speak for about three minutes at a time at these meetings. Since moving to Decatur, I have been concerned that, unlike in Chicago, Decatur has no bike lanes and no easy way for pedestrians to get around, especially in certain areas that connect parts of the city to one another. In Chicago, there are so many ways to get around. I didn’t own a car until I was 40, when the pandemic hit. I left shortly thereafter. Decatur seems very car-oriented, and no one seems to question this state of affairs.

When I arrived at the city council meeting, there was a line of people ready to speak to the city council on a controversial project in the city, which I was unaware of until today. There were people standing in the meeting hall. I couldn’t get past because there was no room. The meeting was being broadcast on a live feed, and a lot of people who were outside, like me, had the live feed of the meeting on their phones. I listened to and watched it on my phone too. I heard person after person speak for or against this project. Some people were concerned about the possible negative effects that this newly proposed cogeneration plant at the ADM plant would have on the residents of this city, on the water supply (Lake Decatur), and on the environment. They were concerned that the positive economic impact wasn’t enough to offset the negative effects of the new facility. There were also business and economic interests there who spoke and propped up the economic benefits of the new proposed plant. They mentioned jobs and tax revenue.

I was there to speak about my concerns regarding how car-oriented this city is and how we need to consider people who are not able to own a vehicle and try to make the city more accessible in general. I felt a little like my topic wouldn’t be relevant.

A little while ago, my nephew, who lives with me and does not own a car or have a driver’s license, had a job at Kroger, which is walking distance from where we live in the South Shores neighborhood of Decatur. It was very convenient for him to work there. He told me about his experiences walking to and from work. On snowy days, because the city doesn’t clean up main sidewalks, he said he had to “play frogger,” walking on the roads and then jumping back on the snow-covered sidewalks to avoid getting hit by cars. He also told me that he had a colleague at Kroger who would regularly walk across a main bridge (on Business Route 51) where there is no pedestrian walkway and where it is very unsafe to cross, just to get to and from work. On nights when the weather was too bad, he would call off work just because it would be even more dangerous to cross that bridge on those days. My nephew told me this colleague had to brave walking across that bridge to get home at night because buses in the city only run until 8 p.m.

Recently, the city implemented a new rideshare program called Decatur Moves. It is a very affordable rideshare system that only costs $2 per ride. That has been a saving grace for a lot of people in the city. Decatur Moves functions all over Macon County and is wheelchair accessible. However, Decatur Moves is a service that stops at 8 p.m., leaving shift workers, like my nephew’s colleague, to fend for themselves.

A few years ago, when I did Uber and Lyft for supplemental income, I recall picking people up from work in the Mount Zion business area of Decatur. They lived in the more low-income center of the city, but they got off late at night from their jobs at the fast food restaurants in that area with no pedestrian access and had no other way to get home than to pay anywhere from $12–$18 (or more!) for a ride. A fast food employee doesn’t make more than about $15 an hour, if that, so for someone to devote an entire hour to an hour and a half of their six- to eight-hour shift to getting home is a huge expense.

All of these experiences, as well as my own personal preference for bike riding and walking (the way I used to do in Chicago), made me very eager to go speak to the city council about these concerns. I am someone with privilege. I have a job that allows me to own a car and get around relatively easily, even during weather that would make it difficult to get around on foot or by bike. If I had an emergency, I could get an Uber or a Lyft. I have also ridden the bus on a few occasions here in Decatur. However, because there were so many people at the city council meeting today who were upset about the new proposal that the city council was supposed to vote on, I decided not to speak.

As I walked out, I thought to myself, “Maybe you could have added a little bit more somewhere in your speech about how the city needs to put terms on these projects and demand investment in infrastructure for these proposals to even be considered.” But it was just an esprit de l’escalier, a little too late. The city council had already moved on to talk about their agenda items as I walked out of the building.

This experience sparked something in me, though. One of our assignments in this class is to write a policy brief, and I have already started working on mine. It will be about this issue of helping people move through the city of Decatur with dignity, regardless of their ability to own a car or pay for expensive rideshare services later in the evening and at night. I intend to email it directly to the city council members. I also intend to come back to the next city council meeting to speak. Next time, I will be more prepared.