Illinois lawmakers are advancing legislation to ensure families adopting children from the state’s foster care system receive complete information about a child’s history before the adoption is finalized. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Darby Hills, R‑Barrington Hills, would require the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to provide adoptive parents with a full, unredacted case record at least 30 days prior to finalization, including medical, educational, and counseling records.
Hills said the measure responds to widespread concerns from adoptive families who often struggle to piece together a child’s background after placement. “We’ve had constituents tell us that they adopted children who never lived with their biological parents and weren’t able to access information about their time in foster care,” Hills explained. One parent, she noted, was able to access details about biological parents but had no record of her children’s foster placements, even though those experiences included trauma that affected the children’s well‑being.
Under current practice, adoptive families may receive some medical records, but key information—such as caseworker notes, placement history, and therapy records—frequently remains inaccessible. In many cases, parents have had to conduct independent research to uncover details, including unsafe conditions in previous foster homes.
Hills emphasized that children and families both deserve full access to a child’s story. “The point is that these children deserve access to their own story, and families deserve the information they need to help their children heal,” she said. The bill also guarantees that former foster youth aged 18 and older can access their records for free.
The legislation sets a timeline of at least 30 days before adoption to give families adequate time to review records and prepare. Hills noted that because the information already exists in case files, compiling it for adoptive families should not impose significant costs on taxpayers.
Some have questioned whether the 30‑day review period could slow down adoptions, but Hills said many prospective parents understand that foster children may have experienced trauma and need clarity about their past. She recounted another constituent who adopted a child at birth and has a full record of milestones, while two older adopted children are left with unanswered questions about their early years.
“It’s their story and it’s their life,” Hills said, underscoring the fundamental role of identity and history in a child’s development. She added that the timeline is open for discussion and that she collaborated with agency representatives and affected families before filing the bill.
