Yep, I agree with @BunsenBurner I also have more sympathy with the DCFS director than some of you seem to have.
It’s really hard when there are a lot of kids because often the kids really are bonded to one another and it’s incredibly rare for that many kids to be accepted by one foster family. Splitting them up can really, really emotionally scar a child. Yes, you are removing them from a filthy home. Yes, you are taking them away from parents who neglected them. You are ALSO taking them away from some or all of their siblings and doing that may hurt them a lot.
In this case, it appears that none of the children were beaten. There’s no indication of sexual abuse. For fairly strong stretches of time, the family–especially the wife–seemed to “get it together.”
So, yes, at the end of the story, it’s easy to say the kids should have been removed earlier. But at each step along the way…I suspect it wasn’t that clear.