OFFICE OF THE COOK COUNTY PUBLIC GUARDIAN JUVENILE DIVISION CHARLES P. GOLBERT "W-OGDEN AVENUE Public Guardian 226, 00DEN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS cst PHONE: (37)4534500, FAX: Gin) 85-509 ADULT GUARDIANSHIP & ‘DOMESTIC RELATIONS DIVISIONS 9 W.WASHINGTON CutICAGO, ILLINOIS 60602 PHONE” (312) 603-0800 June 18, 2019 ame Tee vw publoguardian 2g VIA HAND DELIVERY Honorable Jorge L. Alonso United States District Court Northern District of Illinois 219 South Dearbom Street, Rm. 1908 Chicago, IL 60604 Re: —B.H. v. Walker, No. 88 C 5599 — Children Sleeping on the Floors of DCFS’s Offices as a Result of the Clinically Indefensible “Interim Care Centers” Dear Judge Alonso: I wrote to you on June 3, 2019 and June 18, 2019 to express my grave concerns about, and objections to, DCFS’s clinically indefensible “Interim Care Centers” at former shelter space at Aunt Martha's and Lawrence Hall. The ICCs were also the subject of much discussion at the May 8, 2019 hearing before Your Honor, where plaintiffs’ counsel and the experts expressed their dismay about the ICCs, which DCFS developed without advance notice to the plaintiffs. Most unfortunately, our worst fears have been realized. Tam aware of two children —a 16-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl — who had to sleep on the floors in DCFS's offices at 1911 South Indiana within the past week because DCFS ran out of shelter space. I suspect that other children have also suffered the same indignity in recent weeks whom I have not yet learned of. Of course, DCFS ran out of shelter space because it converted shelter space at Aunt Martha’s to ICCs. Not surprisingly, one of the children ran away the morning after sleeping on. the floors of the offices, and remains on run. CaosThe ICs are a bald and clinically untenable attempt by DCFS to artificially improve its BMN statistics. It doesn’t require a PhD in social work or management theory to know that if you convert already-scarce shelter beds to ICCs, you will run out of shelter beds. This was entirely foreseeable. As a result, not surprisingly, the ICCs have made things worse. DCFS still has the BMN problem, and now it also has children languishing at ICCs with nowhere to go and children sleeping on the floors of its offices. This is in violation of the children’s civil rights, basic human dignity, and, of course, DCFS’s promises to the children under the consent decree. ‘The consent decree in this case is 27 '4 years old, yet DCFS’s shortage of placements and services keeps getting worse. So much so that this past week, for the first time in recent memory, DCES has had to resort to forcing children to sleep on the hard cold floors of its offices because it doesn’t even have an adequate number of shelter beds, much less longer-term placements and services. This situation can only fairly be characterized as contumacious disregard of the requirements of the consent decree. am asking Your Honor to enter appropriate orders to ensure that no more children suffer the indignity of having to sleep on the floors of office space. Talso urge that the ICCs be immediately discontinued. They never made sense, and we are already seeing the clinically deleterious and foreseeable consequences. ‘Thank you for your attention to these concerns. Respectfully Submitted, Aut [ Golo Charles P. Golbert Cook County Public Guardian ce (via email): Hon. Geraldine Soat Brown, Special Master Shawn Eddings, General Counsel, DCFS Benjamin S. Wolf, ACLU Heidi Dalenberg, Riley, Safer, Holmes, and Cancila Barbara Greenspan, Office of the Illinois Attorney General Marci White, MSW, Expert Dr. Mark Testa, Expert Alpa Patel, Chief Deputy, OPG. Janet Bames, Asst. Deputy, OPG Brian Finley, Supervising Attomey, OPG