DCFS Blunder Cost Joliet Woman Her Job: Lawsuit

A Joliet woman accused the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services of getting her fired by failing to close a case from nearly four years ago.

Demetra Rogers, 27, filed a lawsuit against DCFS in Will County court.

In her suit, Rogers said she was fired from her job as a teacher's aide after a background check turned up that DCFS made a finding against her.

"I never knew about any finding because I had never received my appeal letter," Rogers said in the lawsuit, which she penned herself.

In a Nov. 28, 2012 letter Rogers sent to DCFS, she explains how she came to the agency's attention.

Rogers described how her 15-month-old son was "accidentally burned" in July 2009 while she was ironing.

"He was playing near the ironing board," she wrote. "The iron fell and the tip of the iron burned the top of his foot.

"I treated the area which started healing fine," Rogers said in the letter. "I thought it was healing well enough to give him a bath. The water soaked it enough to make the skin start to peel. It was at this point I decided to take him to a doctor to make sure I was putting the right ointment on it."

The doctor helped her, Rogers said, "but he also called to report the accident."

A DCFS investigator then visited her Clement Street apartment, Rogers said.

"He told us everything was in order," she said. "He said (her son's) foot was healing and after he spoke with the doctor he was closing the case."

Rogers said she heard nothing from DCFS for the next three years. But after taking a job as a teacher's aide with United Cerebral Palsy in Novemeber 2012, she was fired when the DCFS case came up on her background check.

"To my total surprise, a medical neglect case was on file," Rogers said in the letter. "I was told I had to leave Cerebral Palsy until the case was cleared."

Rogers wrote that she did eventually see a letter sent from DCFS telling her she had 60 days to respond to its administrative hearings unit, but that it was sent to an address on Washington Street and not to her apartment on Clement, where the investigator had visited her.

"I never received the letter with the wrong address on it," she said.

Rogers said in her lawsuit that she wants DCFS to pay her $50,000.

Go take a look at our Facebook page.