According to Illinois law, you are entitled to receive "non-identifying" information about your child's placement and birth family. You can request that information at any time, as long as your child is less than 21 years of age. 

Once your child is 21, he/she/they must request the search. 

Note: Once your child is 18, he/she/they can request both "non-identifying" information and search service on his/her/their own. If he/she/they do so, we will not notify you of his/her/their request for service. 

We understand that in some situations, you may want to request information or search service without your child being involved. If you are eligible to request service on your child's behalf, we will not contact your child at any time unless you ask us to do so. Furthermore, we will not confirm that you are a client in this program or discuss your request or any aspect of service with anyone without your permission. 

The Illinois Adoption Act specifies that certain “non-identifying information’ be given to adult adoptees (18 years of age and older) and to adoptive/guardianship parents of a child under 18. If it is found in the closed files, you will receive:

• Data about biological relatives, including:
  • Parents’ general appearance
  • Parents’ age at the time of the birth of the child
  • Parents’ race, religion and ethnic background
  • Parents’ education, occupation, hobbies, interests and talents
  • Existence of any other children born to the biological parents
  • Information about biological grandparents, including reason for immigrating to the U.S. and country of origin
  • Relationship between the biological parents
• Detailed medical and mental health history of the child, the biological parents and their immediate relatives
• Actual date and place of birth of the adopted person
• A description of the circumstances leading to the child coming into the care of the Department
• Record of placements prior to adoption

DCFS policy is that guardianship parents receive the same information as adoptive parents. For some clients, we receive files that are very large and contain a lot of detailed information. However, that is not always the case. Until we receive the files pertaining to your child and the birth family, we will not know exactly what information is available. 

If the file contains detailed information about a complex medical condition, we will include redacted copies of those documents. "Redacted" means that certain information is removed from the original document so that the words that are "redacted" are not visible on the copy that is sent to you. Illinois law does not allow us to include identifying information about any birth family members. Therefore, such information must be removed from copies of reports or evaluations that are sent to you.

First we locate your child's closed DCFS file and have it sent to our office. Sometimes the file is not found in DCFS Central Storage and we have to contact DCFS field offices or a POS (Purchase of Service) Agency to find out if they have the files. We also attempt to obtain files established for birth siblings or the birth parents, since they might include medical information that would affect your child. It may only take a few weeks to obtain the files, but sometimes much longer. Once the file is received, we make sure it is the correct file; when a caseworker is available, your case is assigned.

Your caseworker will carefully examine all of the files we have received. All of the  information that the law specifies be given to you is taken out of the files and put on a special form developed for this purpose called a CFI Report (Closed File Information Report).

You will be notified when we are able to assign your request to a caseworker. Once she can begin work on your case, she will estimate how long it will take to complete the report depending upon the size of the files and the complexity of the information found in them.

If you have a doctor, therapist or attorney  write a letter explaining the urgent need for the information, we can consider giving your request priority status.

We cannot provide originals or copies of any vital records such as birth or death certificates or social security information. As the parent of an adopted minor, you can request a copy of your child's amended Illinois birth certificate from the Division of Vital Records, 925 E. Ridgely Avenue, Springfield, Illinois 62702-5097. You can also call them at (877)323-5299 or at (217)782-6554. The amended birth certificate will show you as your child's parent(s) and will not include your child's birth parent's names. 

There is no fee for this service.