Joseph Ryan, a social work professor at the University of Michigan who has researched Illinois child welfare policies, said most states now have a similar aim of keeping families together despite a parent’s history of drug use.¶¶“To some extent, that makes sense,” he said. “It’s not like we have a great alternative in foster care. The general idea is to see if you can work with a family in the home and reduce the risk of harm to the child.”¶¶But once a child is removed, he said, it can be difficult to reunify a family even if the parents appear to be doing well. Judges, who make the final call about whether children should be removed from their parents or brought back, often are reluctant to allow people with histories of drug abuse to reclaim their kids, he said.¶¶He expects that reluctance to grow even stronger in the wake of AJ’s murder.¶¶“It’d be hard for this case not to play a role in (a judge’s) decision-making,” he said. “We might see children stay in care longer. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, we’ll have to see.”