Shane Paul McGhie (center) stars in “Foster Boy,” a new fictional movie that tells some painful truths about America’s foster home system. (Screenshot from Foster Boy Movies, LLC film)

Jay Paul Deratany ran for office in Illinois a decade or so ago, promising to reduce taxes.

But there are some things that we shouldn’t be cheap about, he says.

“If we say we can’t afford to spend our dollars on children who are wards of the state, I don’t know what we can afford,” he said.

Over the last 15 years, the Chicago lawyer has often filed suits on behalf of foster children claiming their rights have been violated. Sometimes, those rights have been violated to the point that they’re not alive anymore.

An example is his case decided last year, in which Lavandis Hudson, 2, was sent back to his mother despite her being known, a jury agreed, to be suicidal and homicidal.

Hudson’s beating death was a big wakeup call to Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, which was ordered to pay $45 million to Hudson’s extended family. But it was not, unsurprisingly to Deratany, a wakeup call to the state of Illinois or other states which hire such organizations, nonprofit and for-profit, to administer their foster programs more efficiently. They may not be getting their money’s worth.

That’s part of the reason for “Foster Boy,” an independent movie you can see if you’re one of the big shots invited to the Wilmette Theatre for a special screening Dec. 12. That show is part of a publicity effort to get the made-in-Chicago movie seen, an effort that includes seeking a good distribution deal.

Deratany wrote the fictional flick, which is backed by former NBA player Shaquille O’Neal. It’s about a corporate lawyer, played by Matthew Modine, ordered by judge Louis Gossett Jr. to represent a young man suing a private foster-system administrative company for ruining his life. The plaintiff — played by Shane Paul McGhie — was raped for years by an older foster child who was placed in the same home despite the firm knowing he had raped others.

McGhie, 26, blows the other actors away in almost every scene. I’m not sure whether it’s because he’s that good of an actor or because his story is just that compelling.

It’s a tale that’s not uncommon enough, Deratany said. In the movie’s case, the provider gets paid every time a child has to be taken out of a foster home and sent to a new one. That often really happens, he said: “They get paid to fail.”

He said he’s seen providers hide documents from courts, and repeatedly fail to file required reports of the status of their charges.

And he winds up suing after the damage is done. He’d prefer, he said, that safeguards be in place beforehand.

One of those would be that there be serious consequences, such as loss of contracts, for failing to file reports. Also, a requirement that all foster kids are assigned a caseworker, one who’s a licensed social worker.

You would think that would be a given. But it’s not. In one case, “There was one caseworker who had a beautician’s degree,” he said.

And, he said, lawyers should be assigned to kids before there’s trouble, not after it’s too late.

“A child has a 14th Amendment Right not to be put in a situation where he could be deprived of life,” he said.

Nationwide, there are over 440,000 foster kids, and 40 percent of them will be incarcerated, homeless or dead within three years of leaving the foster system.

If the administration of foster kids was entirely done by our governments, it would conceivably be easier to keep track of all the important things that need to be tracked. But for decades now, some of our politicians have been convinced that it’s more efficient and cheaper to privatize.

“We’re not saving money in privatizing,” Deratany said. “We learned that from the (Chicago) parking meters, right?

“It’s the same with the private prisons.”

We assign many very important human needs to private contractors, but we’re probably not saving money, and we’re not getting great results.

Private nursing homes handling public aid patients pack in mentally ill residents alongside frail elderly. Our private prisons are horrifying. Our charter schools are rife with scandal.

No matter what strategy is employed, are there many human needs that we fill adequately?

Many of the mentally ill go untracked and untreated. When autistic children become adults, they wait for years for housing and programs. Millions of Americans are homeless.

We can’t do any of the things that decent people should do, we tell ourselves, because we don’t have the money.

If we did these expensive things well, of course, we’d save in the long run. Solving problems early is good public business.

It’s possible that there might be more money to fix Illinois problems if we’d listened to Deratany in 2008. He was running for political hack Joe Berrios’ seat on the Cook County Board of Review, which handles property tax appeals.

Deratany complained then that Berrios was taking campaign donations from lawyers who dealt with the Board of Review. Those included House Speaker Mike Madigan and other familiar politicians. Then, Berrios would cooperate with those same politicians when he pushed bills for his main career, lobbying. Cozy.

Deratany lost, with 44 percent of the vote. Berrios thrived. Two years later, after 22 years on the board, he went on to eight years of even greater tax-controlling power, as Cook County Assessor.

Sometimes, I wonder how, as enormous new skyscrapers soar into the clouds over the Loop, that Chicago still can’t muster nearly enough property tax revenue to get by.