Statewide: Training and protecting DCFS investigators

A Department of Children and Family Services caseworker was attacked and killed while on a welfare check this month. It's happened before and that's making state lawmakers take notice of the dangers with the job. We talk with a former investigator who now trains those entering a career in child protection.

And a pastor who lost his wife to COVID-19 tells his story. He had decided against being vaccinated, but has since teamed up with the state to spread the message that the shots save lives.

Those stories and more on Statewide.

* Sean Crawford speaks with Betsy Goulet, Director of the Alliance for Experiential Problem-Based Learning at the University of Illinois Springfield. She's spent more than thirty years in child protection and now trains investigators.

* Tinisha Spain of Illinois Newsroom interviews a pastor from Vermilion County, who lost his wife to COVID-19. He's now trying to convince others to get vaccinated.

* Michelle O'Neill talks with Ted Pappas, the CEO of Friendship Manor in the Quad Cities, about the impact COVID-19 on nursing homes and retirement centers.

* Steph Whiteside of Side Effects Public Media looks at changes in contact tracing and how that has created confusion in some areas.

* Peter Medlin checks in with a nurse who has only been on the job for a year.

* Yvonne Boose of WNIJ tells us how forced isolation led a northern Illinois couple to a business idea that incorporates an old fashioned way of communicating.

* Tim Shelley interviews Amanda Pankau of the Prairie Rivers Network about abandoned mine land reclamation.

* Harvest Public Media's Jonathon Ahl reports the federal government uses scores of programs to give out rural funding. But the process can leave out some very small towns.