Broken family ties contribute to gang violence

Life with a Spanish-speaking immigrant as a parent can be tough.

Bilingual children translate for their parents on shopping trips and in meetings, take care of themselves when their parents work long hours and navigate crime-ridden neighborhoods.

These challenges can break up the family, pushing children toward gangs and drugs in their search for a sense of belonging.

“They look for family in the streets,” said Hilda Ramos-Casillas, a licensed clinical social worker at an Oak Park agency with Hispanic clients from around Cook County.

The Chicago-based Latino Social Workers Organization on Saturday hosted about 50 social work students, teachers and professionals at Mercy Home for Boys and Girls in the near West Side to examine challenges and successes facing Hispanic families.

Keeping children out of gangs is a top concern for parents in Pilsen, a predominantly Hispanic West Side neighborhood, Ramos-Casillas said. A Pilsen native, she said roughly a third of her agency’s Hispanic clients are from the area.

Street violence flared recently in Pilsen in the Oct. 7 shooting death of a 30-year-old mother of five. Police have said a gang member is responsible, according to a Chicago Tribune report.

“A lot of times kids are gang-involved because they don’t have parents around,” said Michelle del Pino, a licensed clinical social worker in Oak Park.

When government agencies step in to address negligence and abuse, parents are often intimidated and confused, she said.

To help Spanish-speaking families better navigate the system, The Burgos Consent Decree creates a rubric for bilingual services provided by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. The decree was enacted in 1977 after several Hispanic families – including the Burgoses, for whom the decree is named – sued DCFS for discrimination based on national origin and race.

LSWO’S forum gave service workers a chance to evaluate the decree’s effectiveness.

The Burgos Consent DecreeIn receiving help from the Department of Children and Family Services, the Burgos Consent Decree gives Hispanic parents the right to have:
- a bilingual social service caseworker.
- department documents and correspondence in Spanish.
- services in Spanish for them, their children and other family members.
- children in foster care placed with a Spanish-speaking family.
- a Spanish-English interpreter.

Adrian Delgado, who works in leadership development for LSWO, said a main issue is lack of accountability and documentation, especially in the use of money, which comes from the state and federal government.“We want to know how much money is going to Latinos,” he said.Presenters and participants also called for greater cultural sensitivity.Del Pino said many of her clients – especially undocumented immigrants – are afraid of government workers.

There is also tension between U.S.-born Spanish-speaking investigators and recent immigrants, del Pino said. Hispanic families are a mix of citizens and non-citizens with varying levels of English skills, she said.

Ties to traditional culture are especially strong in Pilsen, Ramos-Casillas said.

“Kids assimilate faster than the parents,” she said, which creates “a lot of intergenerational conflicts.”

U.S. Census 2000 data show that Pilsen is at least 62 percent Hispanic and 37 percent foreign born. More than 63 percent of households speak a language other than English. In Chicago, 27 percent of people are Hispanic, 2003 census data show.

When social service agencies fail to understand cultural issues in Hispanic families, it can deprive parents of due process in trying to reunite with their children, del Pino said.

Most of the parents she sees are between 20 and 40, she said, yet they have had a lot of trauma in their lives. They develop survival skills such as not showing emotions. Caseworkers sometimes interpret stoicism as a lack of caring for their children and give parents bad reports, del Pino said.

Additionally, caseworkers and judges often expect immigrants to act more like a modern U.S. family, del Pino said.

A DCFS investigator, who did not wish to be identified out of concern for disapproval from her supervisors, described a case in which a judge ordered a Mexican immigrant mother to be less submissive to her husband. The court also called immigration officers and the parents were deported.

The social workers said other shortcomings in application of the Burgos Consent Decree include failure to provide forms in Spanish, lack of bilingual attorney representation and shortages of juvenile court translators and bilingual caseworkers.

Lourdes M. Rodriguez, statewide Burgos coordinator for DCFS, said she was glad to hear the suggestions about how the department could better provide services to Latino families.

Rodriguez said the department sometimes makes mistakes. Delays or mismatches in services can cause a child or teenager “to take a different route,” such as becoming involved in gangs or drugs, she said.

Julia Capizzi, marketing coordinator of admissions at Mercy Home, a residential home with a roughly 25 percent Hispanic clientele, said the organization has difficulty understanding how great the need is for bilingual services.

“Only one in 20 immigrants even seek out social services,” she said. Many of those who do come wait until the children are already heavily gang-involved or have substance abuse problems, she said, and at that point Mercy Home is not able to work with them.

Despite shortcomings in applying the Burgos Consent Decree, social workers should appreciate DCFS efforts to assist Hispanic families, said Jesús Muñoz, associate dean and professor at the Graduate School of Social Work at Dominican University in River Forest.

“It’s a humongous job,” Muñoz said. “We should honor them.”