Illinois’ Child Welfare Agency Continues to Fail Spanish-Speaking Families

Two years after a ProPublica investigation, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services still is not complying with a federal court order to better serve Spanish-speaking families.

Early last year, the Cook County public guardian grew worried that Illinois’ child welfare agency once again was failing the Spanish-speaking families whose children were in its care.

So Charles Golbert decided to conduct an experiment. For 10 months, lawyers from his office counted the number of new cases that involved Spanish-speaking families. Then the staffers checked how many of those families’...