1 week Ago
At Indiana University Northwest's 35th Annual Child Abuse & Neglect Prevention Forum Friday, child welfare professionals offered workshops to educate attendees on issues affecting children and families across the state with a focus on the Region's communities. Forum Planning Committee Chair and Associate Professor Emeritus Richard Hug said the event began as a brief conversation among local stakeholders and has grown to include a larger population of professionals from social service agencies, the legal system, nonprofit groups and members of the community to further their knowledge about relevant topics and practices in place to help advocate for the county's youth and their families. "The idea, at first, was to bring awareness, then it was how to offer family support," Hug said.
"But it's also a community issue and everybody needs to be involved." Presenters discussed topics such as foster care, juvenile detention, LGBTQIA+ issues, immigration and local trends, among others. Child welfare trends and issues in Lake County Although the overall number of children in need of services has decreased, DCS Regional Manager Twan Stokes said Lake County has seen a slight uptick in cases since January.
In January 2022, 1,035 children in Lake County were part of open DCS cases, whereas there were 811 open cases in January 2025. The number recorded last month was 873 open cases, according to DCS' public data dashboard . While Stokes cannot pinpoint the exact cause of the recent increase, it seems parental challenges with substance use and homelessness play a role.
"We see these are often co-occurring," she said. Stokes called the county "resource-rich" in many ways, but said there is a need for more mental health services and housing for children and their families. One audience member asked about the state's focus on reuniting children with their families.
Lake Juvenile Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak said the state recognizes the right to parent as a due process right and the court is required to exercise all judgment with the intent to reunify. This is consistent with the Family First Act, passed in 2018, which strives to keep families together by providing access to the right prevention services for the right family, to ensure a stable and safe environment focused on long-term success according to DCS' website . "But at a point, the child's right to permanency outweighs the right to parental rights," Stefaniak said.
"But the Indiana Supreme Court never told us where that line is." Stokes said 40% of children are in their birth homes receiving services. If a child has to be removed, they aim to place them with another family member so as not to cause more harm to the child.
More than half of children who are removed are placed in kinship care. "Removing a child from the only environment they know can have its own set of trauma," Stokes said. "This is why we try to first give the opportunity for rehabilitative services.
" Alternatives to juvenile detention Lake County's Juvenile Detention Center houses approximately 30 to 35 youths per day, Stefaniak said. Thirty years ago, that number was around 100. "It's about detaining for the right reasons for the right amount of time," he said.
Stefaniak said he has parents whose children have been arrested for certain offenses often ask if he can detain their children overnight to "teach them a lesson." He can't do that. "We detain children whom we believe are a risk to the community," Stefaniak said.
Intake officers use the Detention Risk Assessment Instrument to determine the next steps for a child who is arrested. Children are scored based on a point system that takes into account their charges, past charges and runaway history. They will either choose to release the child to their parents, place the child under electronic ankle monitoring or detain them.
Studies cited by juvenile probation offers Kevin Elkins, Ryan Sweeney and Amy Wolosiewicz show youth incarceration can be a predictor of future criminal behavior, whereas juvenile diversion programs are more successful in reducing recidivism. According to a report from The Sentencing Project, brain immaturity fuels delinquency, which is exacerbated by early childhood trauma. Incarceration can retraumatize youth and make them less likely to succeed.
Programs led by grassroots neighborhood, civic and faith-based organizations, therapeutic intervention and expansion of diversion programs can help reduce the likelihood of reoffending. The Juvenile Division was awarded a grant from the Indiana Office of Court Services to start a mental health problem solving court for youths who come in contact with the justice system. The court is in its pre-certification process.
Immigration law The practice of immigration law has changed dramatically since Sept. 11, 2001. The state of today's available programs for children and families are complicated, change frequently and can take years to fully play out.
Today, there are attorneys who exclusively handle asylum cases; there are lawyers who only take on deportation issues. When Sophia Arshad, a partner at Arshad, Pangere & Warring law firm in Merrillville, entered the legal field shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, those fields were considered anomalies, Arshad said.
"By the time I graduated from law school, immigration law and the whole idea of immigration law had completely changed," she said. "The field has become so complicated that (asylum and deportation law) are now their own specialties." Immigrants who enter the U.
S. via certain visa programs, like student visas or Permanent Resident Cards, often called Green Cards, typically have more benefits available to them than undocumented immigrants who enter the country without any kind of inspection by U.S.
officials. But both groups — those who either enter without inspection or overstay their visa status — face legal issues like the lack of a state-issued ID or social security number. Stemming from those issues are socioeconomic challenges, like trouble opening a bank account and problems with signing a lease or getting insurance — though there is no federal law that prevents undocumented people from purchasing medical insurance.
Just because someone does not have a social security number does not mean they cannot go to school or purchase medical insurance, Arshad said, but the laws surrounding those instances are complicated and often case-specific. And it can take years for people seeking asylum, Temporary Protected Status or other legal routes to actually become U.S.
citizens. In the meantime, what should happen to them if they are arrested or otherwise found to have committed a crime is under fierce debate? The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly referred to as DACA, was implemented by former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012 and allows certain people brought to the U.S.
as children to receive deferred action from being deported. In January, a U.S.
Court of Appeals issued a ruling that put a pause on initial DACA requests, though people who had already been allowed to remain in the U.S. because of the program were still permitted to renew their status.
"I have clients who have been renewing their DACA since it was implemented by the Obama administration, and that's all they can do," Arshad said. She also talked at length about the issues with student visas that have caused controversy in national politics of late. "Let's make sure we see our criminal due process out before we start revoking people's student visas," Arshad said.
"What if they were wrongfully accused? What if anything?".
