in their towns. It's everything to the people who gather
there."
Involving the
black church meant involving its ministers, who are a vital force
in the African-American community. The Reverend James Hargett,
another Illinois clergyman, describes the black pastor as the
"gatekeeper" to his community, managing the flow of information and
ideas and counseling families faced with major decisions.
Recognizing
the potential value of cooperation between the DCFS and these
ministers, Coler and Johnson proposed to Father George Clements,
pastor of the largest black Roman Catholic parish in Chicago, that
they work together to increase the number of adoptions by black
families. Father Clements, who had been active in civil rights and
social issues, was skeptical at first. He recalled previous
arrangements in which government involvement in the
African-American community had failed to bring promised results.
Coler pledged that the DCFS staff would follow through on the
administrative changes needed to make a black adoption program
work, a commitment that apparently impressed Father Clements and
seems to have weighed heavily in his positive response. Eventually
convinced of the sincerity of the DCFS administrators, he enlisted
a group of like-minded Protestant clergymen, who became the nucleus
of the board of One Church–One Child.
A
BIPARTISAN EFFORT OVERHAULS ADOPTION LAWS
Before the
director and his chief aide could make needed administrative
changes, however, they had to spur the legislature to revamp the
state's adoption laws, and they had to convince Governor James
Thompson to approve funds to administer the program. Because fiscal
constraints overshadowed most state policy decisions in the early
1980s, the DCFS administrators argued that by increasing the number
of adoptions Illinois would realize substantial savings.
They reviewed
the facts. A child in foster care cost the state $3,390 per year.
Even with a program providing $2,035 a year to encourage families
to adopt handicapped or children with special needs (a category
that included many minority children), cost savings of $1,355 per
child could be achieved simply by getting children out of foster
care and into adoptive homes. The argument worked. In 1981, while
proposing that spending for other departments be held level or cut,
Governor Thompson introduced a fiscal 1982 budget that increased
funding for the adoption program by 25 percent.
Working with
a bipartisan committee on child-welfare policy, Coler devised
legislation to overhaul the adoption process. One bill provided
that foster parents automatically be given first option to adopt
the children in their care. Another measure—designed to
reduce long delays in which abused, neglected, or unwanted children
were shunted from one home to