Specialized Care for Children – Since 1937

Serving Illinois Children with Special Health Care Needs for 75 Years

How did the Division of Specialized Care for Children (DSCC) originate?  What public health issues caused the agency to be formed back in 1937?  To help celebrate seventy five years of service to Illinois children with special health care needs (CSHCN) and their families, we offer this article about our agency’s history, focusing on the worldwide health issues that provoked its inception.

Poliomyelitis (polio) has caused paralysis and death for much of human history.  Over millennia, polio survived quietly as an endemic pathogen; outbreaks were rare and sporadic.  Then, in the 1880s, major epidemics of polio first began to occur in Europe; widespread epidemics began to appear in the United States, too.  By 1910, polio epidemics became regular events throughout the developed world, primarily in cities during the summer months.  Each year, the “summer plague” left its mark on a scared public only to vanish with the first frost. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, polio would paralyze or kill over half a million people worldwide every year.

To combat the American public’s risk of exposure to “infantile paralysis” (as it was generally referred to), as well as other pressing child health and welfare concerns at the turn of the century, the United States government initiated the establishment of the Federal Children’s Health Bureau in 1912.  Then, the year 1916 saw a large outbreak of polio across the United States, with over 9,000 cases reported in New York City alone.  In response, the first clinics in Illinois were conducted by the states Department of Public Health during 1916-1917.  And, in response to an ever-increasing public toll from recurrent outbreaks, the Illinois Association for the Crippled was organized in 1921 to continue the clinics begun by the Illinois Department of Public Health.
 
By 1930, a Department of Public Welfare census identified 10,11 crippled children in Illinois.  The federal government responded in 1935 by enacting the Social Security Act, Title V, Section 504.  Congress appropriated millions to be used for Grants-in-Aid to states to establish services for “crippled children” through Title V of the Social Security Act.  The emphasis on services was to rural and economically distressed areas. 

With federal funding sources now available, the state government wasted little time to organize Illinois-based health care services for its youngest citizens.  In 1937, by an executive order of the state’s Governor, the Division of Physically Handicapped Children in the Department of Public Welfare was created to administer crippled children’s services and to receive federal funds.  Dr. Paul Harmon was our first director of the Division.

The first Division Clinic was held in Shelbyville, Illinois, on June 25, 1937.  Approximately 75 children attended and 17 cases were selected for care.  In FY 1936-37, 60 clinics were held at 30 different sites, and a lone social worker was added to the Division’s staff of nurses.  At the same time, polio epidemics recurred again in Chicago and downstate over the summers of 1936 and 1937.  The public toll from recurrent polio epidemics continued to climb.

By 1939, a two-year survey identified nearly 26,000 children with crippling deformities in Illinois.  Our agency’s name was changed to the Division for Physically Handicapped Children.  Eight Division field offices were created, based in the cities of Rockford, Champaign, Peoria, Springfield, Vandalia, Mt. Vernon, East St. Louis and Chicago.  From this initial organization, 196 clinics were held by the Division during 1939-40 and 8,172 children were examined.  But, fear and therapeutic confusion held sway through-out the following decade as the average annual number of polio cases increased more than five-fold.