Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
FFY 2012 Annual Progress and Services Report
208
The Office of Latino Services has begun working with the Local Area Networks (LANS) serving
the Latino communities to ask for their assistance in recruiting Spanish-speaking foster parents.
The plan is to reach out first to the city LANS and then visit the suburban LANS where there is
more need for Spanish-speaking homes. Downstate LANS areas will be targeted by looking at
the census, Spanish caseloads and investigations being done.
Both OLS and the Burgos Coordinator will continue working with the Cook County Foster
Parent Recruitment Task Force and the Foster Parent Recruitment Council out of Maywood by
providing resources and activities taking place in the Latino community where prospective
Spanish-bilingual foster parents can be reached. As a result, members from the Maywood
Recruitment Council attended various activities in the Latino community to recruit prospective
homes.
The Latino Consortium is a cadre of community-based social service agencies under contract to
DCFS, located in Cook, Lake, DuPage, and Will Counties and in East St. Louis. The
Consortium will continue identifying barriers faced by Spanish-speaking families and develop
and/or provide support and resources for these families who are being served by the child
welfare system. The Consortium will put continued emphasis in recruiting Spanish-speaking
foster families. Additional member agencies have been recruited and will help meet the need to
recruit Spanish-speaking homes in specific areas of need. The Consortium will continue to
attend community and information fairs, produce quarterly publications on foster care, engage
the Spanish language media and work with faith based organizations. Their efforts will focus on
recruiting Spanish-speaking foster homes that are specialized, can serve large sibling groups, and
on adoptive homes for children who speak Spanish in their homes.
The Latino Consortium will continue working with DCFS PRIDE training staff to select host
sites and assist in recruiting Spanish-speaking trainers for these sessions, making every effort to
recruit and coordinate the creation of additional Spanish PRIDE training classes by having more
prospective foster parent applicants. Special efforts were made to ensure that PRIDE pre-service
training is available to prospective foster parents, and training was offered in centralized
locations to minimize travel for participants. Special consideration has been given for Spanish
language foster parent training, allowing as few as 4 participants in providing the training. In
order to ensure that Spanish speaking families are able to fulfill ongoing training requirements to
remain licensed, the DCFS Office of Training started translating the materials for Education
Advocacy Training for foster parents. Special attention will be given to undocumented homes of
relatives supervised by member agencies to advise and help these families obtain a foster care
license and/or seek to assist the families to comply with new home of relative requirements.
The Consortium is still in partnership with Voices for Illinois Children and participates in their
Foster Kids Are Our Kids foster care recruitment campaign. This ensures additional
development of Spanish bilingual foster homes in Illinois and maintains its involvement in
delivering relevant cultural competency training to address the needs of Latino families, as well
as recruiting more Spanish speaking foster families.
The Consortium, the Burgos Coordinator and the Office of Latino Services began holding
meetings with foster parent licensing and recruitment representatives from each member agency
