System Failure Shaw Local News Network

A DCFS worker trying to take a child into protective custody is beaten into a coma by the child's father and dies four months later. Some of the root causes of bad outcomes for DCFS workers and kids in the child welfare system – overworked and undersupported DCFS caseworkers, weak safety protocols, a revolving door of caseworkers with varied standards and a state government unable to agree on even simple changes – remain, a Shaw Media Illinois investigation found.

What does it take to remove a child from the home? And why weren't AJ Freund or Sema'j Crosby? Our first episode on what happened and why.

The deaths of two young children in recent years bear some similarities. Parents of both AJ Freund and Sema’j Crosby had been contacted repeatedly by child-welfare workers. Both had been allowed to remain in the home despite sometimes squalid living conditions. Both died in the home. Why couldn’t the state’s child-welfare system protect these two children? Shaw Media Illinois will share what it has found in its investigation over the next few months and share compelling stories of those affected by the child-welfare system.