The Youth Service Bureau of Illinois Valley will take over foster-care services after Rockford’s Catholic Charities branch said it would cease services after the state’s civil-union law took effect June 1, the Huffington Post reported.
According to its website, the bureau “is a community-based not-for-profit child welfare agency established in 1976.” It will take more than 300 cases from Catholic Charities, and will bring in the Catholic Charities support staff.
Windy City Times previously reported that, with state funding of $7.5 million, Rockford Catholic Charities handles about 350 adoption and foster-family cases in 11 counties in northern Illinois. Officials said that the agency would terminate 58 employees.
For months, the Catholic Conference of Illinois—the church’s lobbying arm—sought an explicit exemption for religiously affiliated child-welfare agencies from providing adoption services to same-sex couples in civil unions.
According to Advocate.com, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services spokesman Kendall Marlowe said in a statement, “It is the intention of Youth Services Bureau, working in cooperation with DCFS and Catholic Charities, Diocese of Rockford, to hire existing caseworkers to maintain those relationships with foster children and foster families, helping make this transition as seamless as possible. Services to children and families will continue with minimal disruption.”