ABOUT US

In the mid 1990s a group of eight Chicago non-for-profit private agencies under contract with the Illinois Department of Children Family Services (IDCFS) to provide child welfare services to Latino children and their families came together to develop a consortium of agencies whose primary interest was to improve the services for Latino families in Cook County.

The Consortium keeps expanding its membership. At the present time, our organization consists of thirteen non-for-profit child welfare providers servicing the greater Chicago. These organizations are as follows: Alternative Behavior Treatment Centers, Arden Shore Child and Family Services, Association House of Chicago, Casa Central, Catholic Charities of Chicago, Child Link, Children’s Home + Aid,  ChildServ, Latino Youth Services, Lifelink/Bensenville Home Society, La Casa Norte, Puentes de Esperanza, and Youth Outreach Services

The mission of the Latino Consortium is as follows:

• Provides a holistic array of community-based bilingual and culturally competent social services to Latino children and families, through agencies who have demonstrated mission-based planning in its services to Latino children and families, as well as dedicated substantial resources to serving Latino families.

• In their continued commitment to the Latino community, the Consortium will seek to build the capacity of other organizations to provide culturally competent services of unmet needs

IDCFS has always engaged in collaborative discussions with the Latino Consortium in an effort to meet the needs of the Latino children and families involved with the State’s Child Welfare System and supported the Latino Consortium’s mission.   To this end, in the early summer of 1996, the Department funded a planning grant to hire two consultants to work on the development of the Latino Consortium and assigned a DCFS staff liaison to the project.

In December of 1996, IDCFS proposed a broad framework for a finalized Latino Consortium model. This model recognized the Latino Consortium as the care manager for the Latino children who needed substitute care services with the expectation that eventually, the Latino Consortium will play this role for all Latino children in private agency care. While substitute care formed the core of the Latino Consortium’s services in this model, the goal was that the Latino Consortium would eventually provide a complete array of intact family, post-reunification and basic services for Latino families in their respective communities.

The Latino Consortium is meeting the substitute care needs as well as the service needs of Spanish-speaking children and families entering the child welfare system in Cook County, thus fulfilling the Consortium’s mission as well as its commitment and obligations to this population. Most of the Consortium’s member agencies are rated in the top half among all contracted child welfare agencies in terms of permanency and caseload ratios. The Latino Consortium has provided bilingual child welfare services to hundreds of Hispanic cases assigned to them from July 1998 through this date.

 Our Impact on Services Delivery:

The Latino Consortium has been able to deliver, in collaboration with DCFS, a holistic array of community based, linguistically and culturally competent social services for Latino children and families. We constitute a forum where Latino child welfare issues, needs and concerns are being discussed.  We focus on the following:

• Reduced the length of stay of Latino children requiring traditional foster care services being placed at the emergency shelter facilities by sharing resources among Consortium member agencies and by keeping track of placement disruptions among agencies from this Consortium, as well as children being served by non-member agencies and DCFS regions. Better communication among member agencies is producing better results for Burgos cases at the shelter, e.g., we have been able to deflect cases from the shelter by finding resources and services when potential disruptions have occurred.

• Helps DCFS with the training activities of Spanish-speaking foster families. We assist the IDCFS Office of Training with access to our foster care trainers to support their PRIDE training in the Spanish language and access to our buildings to accommodate families in the training process. This assistance is also extended to the families recruited by DCFS.

• Developed tools to inventory the number of foster care resources available to this Consortium. For the first time since its creation the Consortium is able to pinpoint with better accuracy the number of foster care resources it has available. Access to this information will be useful in developing:

• Reports to reflect the utilization and availability of our foster care resources.
• A marketing plan to ensure the expansion of the present pool of Spanish-speaking foster homes available through the Consortium.

Summary of Key Important Outcomes

The consortium has developed two committees: 

The Advocacy/Legislative committee’s agenda will be guided by the following premise:

·         Most changes in IDCFS’ policy could have a direct impact in the work we do with Latino families.

·         Changes in practice among service providers, including LC membership, could also have a direct impact in the work we do as well. Hence, our interest in helping to shape the policy and programmatic development that takes place at both places.

·         We need to develop a stronger voice in our relation to DCFS as well as other state agencies.

The Development Committee will focus on seeking diversification of our funding stream

The Consortium has identified other organizations that have expressed interest in joining the Consortium and will continue to expand its membership.

The Consortium continues to enhance the Latino Consortium brand through a series of community events, public service announcements and the recruitment of Spanish speaking foster homes.  For the FY’09 the Consortium members licensed 36 new foster homes.

Our statewide presence has produced positive results in the Quad City area. The creation of the Esperanza/Latino Social Service Network in Rock Island came as result of the development of a partnership of public and private organizations.

We continue our involvement with the Latino Leadership Council in Rockford. We are strengthening our relationship with La Voz Latina and we are providing support to the IDCFS Foster Care Council in Rockford.

The Consortium received a grant from the New American Initiative to provide cultural competence training to human service providers in Cook County. The grant has allowed this Consortium to adapt segments of the Latino Child Welfare Training Initiative Curriculum developed at Loyola University School of Social Work to train and offer the opportunity to child welfare practitioners to develop/refresh their skills to effectively work with Latino children and families.

The Consortium is working in collaboration with various other community organizations who are vested in working with the field of prevention. Our presence allow us to be actively involved in helping with program development related to community health services; youth development programs; and community networking committees in an effort to strengthen our community involvement in areas with high Latino population

Currently, the headquarters of the Latino Consortium is located within the main offices of Lifelink/Latino Family Services. For additional information about the Latino Consortium, please contact us at (773) 626-7151. Toll Free Number for Foster Care Recruitment 1-888-490-1429.