Kids For Cash Scheme Exposes Horrors of For-Profit Prisons:

Joe Wright
Activist Post

The fact that the United States leads the world in prison population is becoming common knowledge. Somewhat lesser known is the direct connection between corporate prisons and incarceration rates. There is no starker example of this than Louisiana which leads the world in for-profit prisons and, just coincidentally, happens to have the world’s highest prison population per capita.
The U.S. prison business has become the essence of predatory corporatism: it privatizes profits and socializes losses. This combination has led to a situation where correctional facilities have very little incentive to correct the behavior of those who reside within their walls, but every incentive to ensure that new bodies arrive as fast as possible, and keep them in a state of indentured servitude. This is even happening with the return of debtors’ prisons in some states – once thought to be intelligently left behind as a brutal chapter of Medieval Europe or Victorian England.
However, something even worse has taken place in the area of so-called juvenile delinquency.
Luzerne County Pennsylvania Judge, Mark Ciavarella Jr., exposed the darkest underbelly of a predatory system with his role in what has come to be known as “kids for cash.” Ciavarella thankfully was caught and sentenced to 28 years in prison for taking more than $2 million in bribes from the builder of two detention centers. The centers were literally built and filled off of the incarceration of 3,000 juveniles (some as young as 10 years old) the vast majority of whom would later would have their convictions overturned by the Pennsylvania supreme court. A new documentary delves deeper….
The documentary illustrates the case of Judge Ciavarella as the worst yet brought to light, but looks also at the overall structure that has been set up to enable this type of abuse. As pointed out by Kids For Cash, two million children are arrested every year – 95% for non-violent crimes; and the United States incarcerates 5 times more children than anywhere else on earth.
Once exposed to the harsh life behind bars, many children are scarred for life, with some going down the path to even worse criminality than what originally landed them in jail. Worse still, many have gone on to commit suicide like one child featured in the documentary.
This film is a harsh reminder that America has a very strange way of perceiving its “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” mantra.
With more people locked up than any of its continuously rotated demonic enemies, it’s high time to honestly look around and see what America is really building.

http://www.activistpost.com/2014/03/kids-for-cash-scheme-exposes-horrors-of.html

http://sarasotacrookedlawyers.com/kids-for-cash-scheme-exposes-horrors-of-for-profit-prisons/

Deaths Of 8 Children Put Hillsborough Kids Inc. In Limbo

TAMPA — The homegrown, nonprofit agency charged with protecting 2,500 of Hillsborough County's most vulnerable children is at risk of losing its $65.5 million state contract because of eight dead kids.
They died in the last two years while under the supervision of Hillsborough Kids Inc.
The eight stood out in a Department of Children and Families study of child deaths statewide. Seven of the eight children were under supervision because of reports of abuse, neglect or abandonment. DCF said no other agency in Florida had so many deaths.

Mike Carroll

Two agencies — Big Bend Community-Based Care in Tallahassee and Our Kids Inc. in Miami-Dade — each reported five deaths. Just one case apiece involved children who had previously been abused or severely neglected.

"Any death of a child raises concern," said Mike Carroll, DCF's regional director. "When you have eight, especially under the circumstances that occurred here, that raises alarms."
He said the future of Hillsborough Kids was undecided, but "performance around child safety is a key success requirement for any vendor we contract with. If a vendor is unable to perform at a high level in the business of keeping kids safe, that puts its ongoing contract at risk."
Hillsborough Kids' response:

CEO Jeff Rainey

"Message received," said CEO Jeff Rainey.
The agency's contract runs out in June. DCF issued "Invitations to Negotiate" to both for-profit and nonprofit agencies. Among the expected competitors are agencies serving Pinellas, Pasco and South Florida counties.
Hillsborough Kids has been DCF's lead social service agency in the county since the state began outsourcing services to families and children in 2001. The giant office on Florida Avenue sits next door to DCF's Hillsborough headquarters.
The expiring contract would have gone out for bid regardless of performance, and a decision to renew isn't based on a single number. Rainey said the vast majority of protected children are living safely. In the past five years, 10,000 more have been kept out of the system through aid to families, and 2,000 others have been adopted. He also cites the agency's local roots, its 12-year Tampa history, and its warehouse of food, kitchenware and clothing that keeps the families it counsels going.
"We either bat a thousand, or we bat zero," Rainey said. "When a child dies, we bat zero."
In the last two years, tragedy has struck one child after another.

Among the most publicized: a 4-month-old boy who was beaten and thrown from a car on I-275 in 2009. The ex-boyfriend of the baby's teenage mother was charged with his murder. Another victim was a 5-month-old girl choked to death last year. Police charged her mother. Also last year, an 18-month-old toddler, once found sleeping next to a loaded gun during a drug raid, wandered into the path of car in an apartment parking lot and was killed.
This year, two more child deaths caused Hillsborough Kids to take action against two key subcontractors that perform home visits:
Mental Health Care Inc. was found at fault in its monitoring of Ezekiel Mathis, a 1-year-old killed last May. Three workers apparently were unaware that a boyfriend they found living in the home had been barred by a judge. Their e-mail inquiry to deputies wasn't opened until after the baby's death. The boyfriend is charged with his murder. After the tragedy, MHC removed the three workers from its Crisis Response Team.
Recently, MHC's $2.4 million contract was cut by $250,000. MHC also received only a six-month extension of its contract rather than full renewal. At the same time, Hillsborough Kids signed a yearlong, $689,000 contract with an agency similar to MHC.
Children's Home Society was cited for missing dangers 16-month-old Ronderique Anderson faced when he was taken from his mother and put in the care of his father. Investigators found caseworkers should have provided the mother with better services and more closely examined the criminal backgrounds of the father and his girlfriend. They also said the case supervisor did not provide sufficient oversight or instruction. His father is charged with beating the baby to death last February.
Children's Home Society, which is paid $5.1 million annually, was stripped of half its caseload.
David Bundy, CEO of Children's Home Society of Florida, said his agency agreed a smaller caseload was necessary to get a handle on problems.

David Bundy

DCF acknowledges that in the volatile business of protecting vulnerable children, some can die — even when everything possible is done to prevent it.
But the review of the eight deaths found that, in some cases, everything wasn't done.
The two most common shortcomings identified by DCF: failures of frontline workers in the most potentially dangerous homes to understand the family dynamics, and failures of their supervisors to give enough guidance.
DCF administrator Carroll says effective casework is based on common sense, intuition and experience as much as following check lists and completing questionnaires. Supervisors are key, especially when caseworkers are young,
In one federally required quality assurance check this year, Hillsborough Kids scored 25 percent for supervisory reviews of children's safety, permanency and well-being.
It scored 56 percent on how well supervisors followed up on guidance and direction.
The agency was criticized for considering the mother's needs in just seven of 11 sample cases and the father's needs in two of nine.
Other Hillsborough Kids subcontractors include Camelot Community Care, Gulf Coast Community Care, Devereux, and Youth and Family Alternatives.

Among the eight dead children, three fell under Camelot supervision, three under Children's Home Society and one each was managed by Devereux and Mental Health Care.
Rainey said the number of subcontractors has helped reduce caseloads. But Hillsborough Kids' strategic plan acknowledges the difficulties of managing so many subcontractors.
Hillsborough Kids has prohibited Mental Health Care from sending a case manager and therapist to a home at the same time, then counting their visit as two of the three required visits per week — something that happened in the Ezekiel Mathis death. Rainey said the joint visit was an isolated incident, not a regular practice.
The joint visits were done for safety, the agency replied in writing. "MHC still teams its staff when safety is a concern, and agrees with HKI to count this as one visit only."
In a review, Hillsborough Kids also criticized Children's Home Society for "a significant number of risk/safety issues" and performances "below expectations in qualitative guidance by supervisors."
The agency demanded future scores of at least 80 percent on quality assurance reviews.
It ordered Children's Home Society to submit a written plan for improvement.
"We agreed with the findings," said Bundy, the society's CEO. He said his agency is working with the universities of South Florida and Central Florida to catch red flags earlier. He said the agency found it wasn't making changes fast enough in Hillsborough and redesigned the program with major staff changes.
At Hillsborough Kids, Rainey said, his agency has reviewed 1,800 cases and introduced changes.
They include the pending creation of a special dependency court for the highest-risk cases. It will be presided over by Circuit Judge Katherine Essrig.

Judge Katherine Essrig

New software will flag families at high risk for abuse: those with teen mothers, day care problems, past domestic violence and parents who were abused as children. Most of the factors showed up in the eight deaths. The agency also has started a Family Finding program to identify biological or adoptive family members, teachers, coaches, and friends to form support teams for children.
Rainey said frontline workers will have to take an additional 16 hours of training to learn how to size up families and household environments.
He said supervisors, too, will get more training and will be equipped with devices that alert them to problems found during home visits.
DCF's Carroll said the changes are all good.
"But in the end, what we are looking for is improved performance."

Robin Rosenberg

Robin Rosenberg, deputy director of Florida's Children First, serves on the committee that will review bids when Hillsborough Kids seeks to renew its contract. She said she hasn't yet formed an opinion, but she said the number of deaths "is alarmingly high."
DCF, she notes, has shown before that it's not afraid to make big changes to give kids and families a better shot to survive and thrive.
"Safety is important, but it is not everything," she said. "We could lock kids in padded cells and they would be safe. We have to do a lot more to make sure they do well."
John Barry can be reached at jbarry@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3383.

[Last modified: Oct 09, 2011 11:38 AM]

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article1195717.ece

Judge Allows Suit Against DCF, Others To Proceed For Naples Girl Abused In Foster Care

NAPLES — He had an alcohol problem, a drunken driving arrest, a juvenile rap sheet and was the target of a restraining order, so he was turned down twice after applying to be a foster father.
Yet when Jeff Allen Woodring of Golden Gate applied with his wife, Kathy, they were approved as foster parents for a sexually abused 13-year-old girl, who later claimed they drank alcohol and smoked marijuana together, and he molested and raped her.
He was arrested and sued.
The 2008 lawsuit by the woman, now 22, overcame a hurdle last month after a Collier judge denied a motion by Ruth Cooper Center to drop the complaint, which also targets the state Department of Children and Families, Family Preservation Services of Florida, David Lawrence Mental Health Center, and Children’s Network of Southwest Florida.
This month, Children’s Network filed a notice of a proposed confidential settlement, a routine move aimed at possibly recouping its legal fees.
As the civil case heads to trial, Woodring, who maintains his innocence, remains free on $75,000 bond and wears an ankle monitor pending his criminal trial in late September.
“It was totally inappropriate to place a sexually abused teenage girl alone with an older man in a small guest house,” said the woman’s attorney, Richard Filson of Sarasota, who will be there to support the Naples woman at Woodring’s criminal trial.
Filson is the attorney who won a $1.2 million award from DCF for 26-year-old Pierreisna Archille and her daughter, now 9.
Archille’s former foster father was her daughter’s father. Bonifacio “Bennie” Velazquez, 74, of Immokalee, was released from state prison in 2008 after serving 6½ years for molesting Archille’s baby sister and repeatedly raping Archille, who has the mental abilities of a first-grader.

 DCF, which oversees the subcontractors that provided

care for the foster daughter in the latest case, declined comment, but said abuse within foster homes is highly unusual.
“We’re exceedingly careful with these children,” DCF spokeswoman Erin Gillespie said Friday. “It’s very rare, but one case is too many where these children have already suffered.”
Gillespie cited an intensive questionnaire and interview process that enables DCF to weed out unsuitable foster parents. Applicants are asked about their childhoods, discipline theories, how they treated their children, how they were treated as children, and their sexual lives — what’s appropriate, normal and what’s abuse.
The Woodrings operated a special therapeutic home for abused children with behavioral needs that exceeded basic foster care.
“Those parents have to take extra training to be foster parents ... to deal with a child with more issues,” Gillespie said. “It’s extremely rare that we have an abuse or neglect report for a foster home.”
“The very last thing we would want for a child in a foster home is to be abused again because we know that these children have been abused or neglected and they are vulnerable,” she added. “That’s why the process is so thorough.”

The lawsuit says the girl and her two siblings were placed in the Woodring home in 2000, but the couple separated in 2003 and he moved into a small, adjacent guest house with the girl, then 16.

Quotable

“While living with the Woodrings, (she) had developed a substance-abuse problem,” says the lawsuit, amended last year to add DCF. “Jeff Woodring provided and consumed alcohol and marijuana with (her).”

“While living with the Woodrings, (she) had developed a substance-abuse problem,” says the lawsuit, amended last year to add DCF. “Jeff Woodring provided and consumed alcohol and marijuana with (her).”
The lawsuit says she was last sexually abused in January 2006, when Collier sheriff’s deputies were alerted by DCF and the home was shut down. Woodring was arrested four months later and faces life in prison if convicted.
The lawsuit alleges the girl suffered physical trauma, emotional anguish, shame, humiliation, insecurity, self-revulsion and damage to her self-esteem. She also suffered medical problems, including suicide attempts, that prompted medical bills.

The lawsuit seeks damages for battery, negligence and vicarious liability, contending DCF and its subcontractors are liable as employers of a foster parent because they placed the girl in a position to be molested by licensing and relicensing an unfit foster parent who twice was rejected due to disqualifying offenses.

Fast facts

The lawsuit contends the agencies had a duty to monitor, supervise and ensure her safety and that they knew or should have known of the abuse.

The lawsuit contends the agencies had a duty to monitor, supervise and ensure her safety and that they knew or should have known of the abuse.
At a May hearing before Collier Circuit Judge Cynthia Pivacek, Filson argued Woodring never should have been licensed.
“That ought to be enough,” Filson told the judge, citing Woodring’s alcohol abuse and domestic violence history.
But attorney Joel Roth of Miami, who represents Ruth Cooper Center, contended it shouldn’t be liable because Woodring was required to adhere to duties under their contract.
“The minute you are performing a sexual assault, you are no longer acting within the course of your employment,” Roth argued, citing a prior court ruling in which an insurer refused to cover a deputy who raped a woman he’d promised not to arrest if she agreed to have sex.

“Jeff Woodring is a foster parent,” Roth said. “He is not authorized under any circumstances to assault, molest or sexually abuse a foster child. He is not acting in furtherance of his employer’s intentions. There can be no liability.”


Filson, however, cited a different court ruling in which a trooper who stopped a girl walking home from elementary school told her she was a theft suspect, drove her to a remote area and molested her.
Filson contended that, like that trooper, Woodring was only able to sexually assault his foster daughter because he was employed as a foster father and raped her under the scope of his duties.
Under a motion to dismiss, a judge must take a plaintiff’s allegations as factually true, allowing a lawsuit to move to the next stage if there are no other defects. Pivacek denied Roth’s motions to dismiss the case.
The defendants can seek dismissal later by filing a motion for summary judgment, which means a judge rules there are no factual issues to be tried and that the lawsuit can be decided on certain facts without a trial.

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STOP DCF IN FLORIDA

DCf is corrupt! They steal our children!

 Tuesday, September 6, 2011

STOP DCF IN FLORIDA

To Whom It May Concern:                                                                                                                                                                       Attorney Kyle Fletcher

 We would like to file some complaints with the State of Florida concerning CBC a subcontracted company for Seminole county DCF, JUDGE JOHN GALLUZZO and Attorney Kyle Fletcher We have had a terrible time with these people. We are two parents that will no longer sit back and do nothing about the unethical practices. Why it is a Judge can be very rude raise his voice and treat people the way we have been treated? If we had done this in his court room we would have gotten contempt of court. Where is the justice system? I live in a country where I should be free. I live in a country that has Constitution. Our rights have been violated. We have been treated very unfairly. I contacted my court appointed attorney all the time he don’t reply. I have emails that I have sent this has gone on over 6 months now. He can’t even show up for court. Isn’t this legal malpractice and VERY unethical? We need to know who to contact and how contact them?

 WE WILL GO TO EVERY NEWS PAPER, EVERY NEWS PRESS AND POST ON EVERY WEBSITE ON THE INTERNET REGARDING THESE TYPE OF ISSUES IF SOME THING DOSE NOT CHANGE.  Why do these State agencies and this Judge have immunity?  Our tax dollars pay for a corrupt and very unethical system. Now if we didn’t pay taxes I assure you we would not complain as much as we will be now. We have been calling different people for months. I have sent emails this has to stop somewhere and it needs to be now!

 We were told by Susan Cox our case manager during a staffing we could do our classes for our case plan online we have a witness that heard this. This same case manager has also stated that she wanted to move this case to the county our child resides in. We have had many court hearings where there have been many lies and a lot of unethical practices done. We have been flat out called liars amongst other things by JUDGE GALLUZZO. Now if he is able to call us these names can we do the same to him and with no legal action against us please let us know? He was created just like we were he took an oath with GOD! If he is unable to treat us fairly then we want him to step down from that bench and go up against another Judge that can call him down and put him in place.  These classes WE took were court approved classes now the need to be accepted. Our child has been through enough. CBC placed him in a NON-MED foster home with severe medical conditions. Our child has physiological damages now we believe from the state of Florida’s DCF AND SEMINOLE COUNTY for not employing competent employees. OUR WHOLE FAMILY DEMANDS JUSTICE NOW! Our child has never ever been harmed the harm has been done in Seminole County Florida. Why does the State of Florida and Seminole County let these people have a job?  It took over 5 months to even get a referral for the parenting plan. The attorney for CBC never has the correct information. This county has said we have been non-compliant when in fact we called daily to find out why we had no referrals.

WE DEMAND ANSWERS AND ACTION AGAINST ALL PARTIES!!!!!!!!  WE ARE TAX PAYERS AND WE WILL GO TO THE PRESIDENT IF THIS CONTINUES TO HAPPEN……….There is much more than this that has happened but we will no longer tolerate this!


http://stopdcf.blogspot.com/2011/09/stop-dcf-in-florida.html

Thank You
Raul Irizarry

Please sign,pass it on.

 http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/florida-department-of-child-and-families-dcf-power-abuse