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In a March 27 Facebook post, Sen. Jason Plummer sounded the alarm about DCFS.

“Our state is broken - ethically, financially, morally,” he wrote on Facebook. “In what world would you ever imagine a headline such as this? In Illinois, sadly, we have just become accustomed to them. There is no excuse, there is no "messaging" away from the disaster that is the @Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. How many more kids have to die? How many more children have to see their futures destroyed before we get a governor who will go in and tear this agency down to the studs and rebuild it?”

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services’ Marc Smith has been held in contempt of court multiple times now. The most recent order involves the agency sending a 16-year-old girl in foster care to nearly 25 different placements, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The most recent contempt of court order is the fourth in six weeks.

Plummer joined the Illinois Senate in 2019, He was elected to represent the people of the 54th Senate District. Outside his legislative work, Plummer is the vice president of R.P. Lumber and R.P. Home and Harvest, family owned and operated businesses with over 100 locations throughout Illinois and six other states.        

Gov. Pritzker appointed Smith to the position of acting director of DCFS in April 2019. The Illinois Senate confirmed Smith as director in June 2021.

Plummer's statement on Facebook continued: "It's not like the IDCFS disaster is a secret or that this is a new phenomenon. When will the media, legislature, and Illinoisans demand accountability and competence? Talk is cheap, Governor JB Pritzker, these are your agencies. Put your presidential aspirations aside for a moment and fix this. No matter where we look - IDCFS, Illinois Department of Human Services, @illinIllinois Department of Corrections - we continue to see the State of Illinois fail the most vulnerable among us. If people don't lose their jobs this week over this story it tells you all you need to know about the entrenched bureaucracy and big talk, no action coming from the executive branch. "

An audit of the IDCFS garnered heat from politicians seeking changes. The auditor general began conducting the DCFS 2020 because of Public Act 101-0237.

He shared a link to a CBS story about a DCFS placement, which put a teenage girl with a 24-year-old pimp. “A 16-year-old girl was already a sex trafficking victim – and we have learned the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services placed her with a three-time convicted felon who is accused of forcing her into prostitution. CBS 2 Investigator Dave Savini has been exposing state child welfare system failures for years. In this case, it is almost unreal what happened to a foster child. But indeed, DCFS placed a child sexual assault victim into the care of a man who should never have been given a license to be a foster parent. The troubled 16-year-old girl was placed in a foster parent's home in an apartment building at the corner of 80th Street and Hermitage Avenue. During our years-long investigation into DCFS, the CBS 2 Investigators made the astounding discovery that the licensed foster parent who lived in that apartment – and whom the state entrusted to care for the teenage girl - was a 24-year-old man with a lengthy criminal record.”

The audit was released on May 12 from The Office Of The Auditor.

DCFS responded to the station's report with this statement: "In this case, the 16-year-old was placed with a friend of the family with the support of both her birth and adoptive mothers and the guardian ad litem in an effort to provide her with stability due to her history of running away from previous placements. Over the next several months DCFS regularly met with the friend of the family as well as the adoptive and birth mothers and the guardian ad litem on a placement plan. These are the individuals with parental rights and responsibilities related to the child and DCFS, therefore, works closely with them to determine an appropriate plan of action for the child. The child has since been removed from this household and there are no other foster or adoptive children living in this household. The child is currently in the care of a DCFS private partner and DCFS is working expeditiously to find a permanent and medically appropriate placement for this child that will provide her with the care she requires."

The Telegraph reported a law was named in honor of two-year-old Ta’Naja Barnes after her death in 2019 that required DCFS to complete home safety checks, but the audit found that even though this is now needed, it’s not happening.

Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert had a response to that statement as well: "This is so disingenuous and dishonest. As you know, the teen expressed an interest in living with Johnson. DCFS represented that Johnson had passed DCFS's placement clearance, and that DCFS had approved Johnson as a paid fictive kin placement for her. Under DCFS's regulations, DCFS must perform a criminal background check on an individual before he or she can pass DCFS's placement clearance. "DCFS either never did this required background check on Johnson or, if DCFS did do this required background check, it did not do so competently or was not concerned about his lengthy record. We most certainly never told DCFS, or anyone else, that we supported DCFS placing her with Johnson if DCFS's required background check came back to DCFS with a record as long as an arm including Johnson being a three-time felon. Moreover, as is clear from Judge Murphy's order, DCFS also never disclosed to the court that Johnson had this extensive criminal background despite DCFS passing him for placement clearance and approving him as a paid fictive kin placement. It's just so disingenuous."