Still waiting for change 8 months after AJ died

Eight months is a long time in the life of a young child like AJ Freund, who should have spent it turning 6, starting kindergarten and experiencing the excitement of another Christmas.

Eight months is an eternity in the life AJ was enduring, filled with torture and abuse in his Crystal Lake home that abated only when he died from a beating on April 15.

Eight months is too long to wait for action to prevent another child's death.

Yet, that's how much time has passed without Illinois Department of Children and Family Services saying what it is going to do differently to make sure those in charge of child welfare never again disregard a litany of warnings and leave a youngster to suffer at the hands of drug-abusing parents.

AJ's mother JoAnn Cunningham pleaded guilty to murder this month to avoid a life sentence. His father Andrew Freund is jailed on the same charge. AJ's caseworker Carlos Acosta and Acosta's supervisor Andrew Polovin are out at DCFS and are battling the agency over whether it must defend them in a federal lawsuit filed by AJ's extended family, who cared for the boy for the first 20 months of his life after he was born with opioids in his system.

Those reckonings are not the end of this story.

DCFS has yet to answer many questions, despite Gov. J.B. Pritzker's declaration in May that "urgency is required."

Chief among them is the future of the agency's policy prioritizing keeping families together. A report by the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall research center criticized the agency as being so focused on keeping children with their parents that it has sometimes left those children in grave danger.

A DCFS internal report on its handling of neglect and abuse reports involving AJ has yet to be re-leased, eight months after the boy's body was wrapped in plastic and buried in a rural area near Woodstock.

What changes are DCFS making to safeguard the children of drug-abusing parents and to make sure relapses quickly come to light?

Among the many red flags in AJ's case is this one: JoAnn found unresponsive behind the wheel of her parked car after using drugs. Hospital workers notice AJ's face is bruised. She is using, he is injured, yet AJ is sent home with his parents and DCFS rules the suspicion of abuse and neglect to be "unfounded." A year later, AJ is dead.

DCFS has not been completely idle. The agency got more funding, hired more workers and added more training. It's not enough.

We're waiting for policies and new processes putting children as the absolute priority, not intact families or anything else. And that change is taking too long.