Letters to the editor.

Contrary to the Reporter's implication ["Cut Short," June 2004], the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services does track fatalities and has done so for more than a decade. Why do fatalities generally go up during a foster-care panic? Because workers are so overloaded with all those children needlessly removed that they have even less time to find children in real danger.

The more recent figures cited by the Reporter don't show the unbroken increase in fatalities implied in the story. Rather, they show wide fluctuations from year to year.

Fatalities can fluctuate wildly for reasons beyond an agency's control. Overall re-abuse of children left in their own homes is a far more reliable indicator of child safety, yet you dismiss the decline in such re-abuse with one "waive of the hand" quote from still another advocate of the take-the-child-and-run approach. Child safety has improved as removals have fallen.

There is plenty still wrong with DCFS-including cases in which children are left in dangerous homes.

There also are plenty of cases in which DCFS still takes children from homes that are sale or could be made sale with the right kinds of help. And those problems still are inextricably related. Solving the problems will require even more effort to keep families safely together so workers have time to find and rescue more children in real danger. And compared to most of the country, Illinois does far better at keeping children safe.

Richard Wexler

Executive Director

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform

Alexandria, Va.

I don't believe we, as a society or as a state, benefit from scapegoating one agency or group of professionals. Do I believe that DCFS is perfect and without culpability in all things? No, that would be absurd. But I submit that investigating child abuse and neglect is one of the hardest jobs anyone anywhere will ever do. I understand this because as a physician, people's lives and well-being rest in my hands sometimes; it's an incredible burden to bear.

I am amazed that a threat to our country from outside our borders garners so much money, attention to detail and a frenzy of policy changes when we have a serious threat to our future right in our own homes. Agencies that serve abused children hold bake sales to fund their centers, five in fear every year of appropriated funds being cut and losing their jobs, work 60 hours a week while being paid for 30, and carry the sorrow of the bruised and battered bodies of these precious little children so that the rest of society can sleep soundly at night. I want you to keep looking at the reasons these children die. I want you to look hard at policies and procedures in our state, and I want you to keep abused children in the forefront of our policymakers' and legislators' minds. I just don't want you to find a convenient place to hang the blame, as it is always our failure as a community and a society when a child dies, and that death could have been prevented.

Deanna M. St. Germain

Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics

Southern Illinois University 

School of Medicine

Anna, Ill.

I'm my junior year of high school, I was in a minority pre-med program called the Chicago Area Health and Medical Careers Program (colloquially known as CHAMPS) that identified minorities talented in the sciences and exposed them to the health professions ["Underrepresented," June 2004]. During that summer, I went to the University of Chicago and watched as then-19-year-old Bill McDade spoke about the biophysics of sickle cell anemia in front of an electron microscope. I decided just from looking at this display that I wanted to go to medical school at the University of Chicago. Five years later, in 1987, I enrolled as the only African American in my class. Much of what I have become is traced back to CHAMPS and people like Bill McDade.

Eric E. Whitaker

Director

Illinois Department of Public Health

We welcome letters pertaining to our coverage. Send them to [e-mail] or 332 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 500, Chicago, Ill., 60604. Please include name, address and a daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for space and clarity.