Boy smothered after Florida, California both fail to protect him

By B y Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch

cmarbin@miamiherald.com

Two states, on opposite sides of the country, had a chance to save 16-month-old Daymeon Chrystopher Wygant. Both Florida and California child welfare administrators expected the other state’s agency to protect the boy, whose parents had a well-documented history of sexual battery, mental illness, weapons possession, homelessness and neglect.
Neither state did.

Last week, police say, Daymeon’s father smothered the toddler with his hands, then wrapped him mummy-like to stop his fussing. Cody Eugene Wygant then left the boy to die while he resumed an online Xbox game — and watched three episodes of the science fiction TV show Fringe.
Daymeon and his infant sister were under the supervision of the California Health and Human Services Agency in January when social workers in the Sacramento Valley city of Redding, in Shasta County, placed the boy and his parents on an airplane bound for Central Florida, nearly

3,000 miles away. They asked their counterparts in Florida to look in on the boy’s family. The investigation that followed was superficial, a top Department of Children & Families administrator acknowledged Friday.“It is deeply troubling that the department failed to truly understand the import of the extensive needs of the family and the high risk of these children,” said DCF Deputy Secretary Pete Digre. “I feel if both California and Florida had used the established child protective systems and process, a better outcome would have been achieved. This would have required more through and transparent communication from Shasta County and a comprehensive assessment in Florida.”
California child welfare administrators released a short statement Friday to the Miami Herald: “Any time a child is hurt or harmed in any way, it is a tragedy and that is what we work to keep from happening. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on any specific case,’’ said Tim Mapes, community education specialist with the Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency.
About three months after Daymeon arrived in Homosassa, a tiny hamlet north of Tampa Bay, the boy died. Family members initially told police they discovered Daymeon in his playpen no longer breathing. Hours later, Wygant told the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office he suffocated the boy because he was “very frustrated” that Daymeon was crying uncontrollably — preventing the father from focusing on his Xbox.
Following the smothering, a police report says, Wygant wrapped him in layers of bedding, preventing him from “receiving fresh air.” In his death, police said, Daymeon may have saved his 3-month-old sister, who was later found to have been so severely neglected that the rear of her skull had become flattened, the result of seldom being moved. The newborn also had a severe rash on her neck, armpit, back and leg, causing tissue loss. She is now in state care.
The Wygant home, the police report said, “was heavily infested with bugs, insects and contained a very foul odor, which could be smelled from the street.”
Daymeon joins more than 477 Florida children — whose stories are detailed in the Miami Herald’s Innocents Lost series — who died of abuse or neglect since 2008 after members of their family had come in contact with DCF.
“It is inconceivable that a father could kill his infant son — it just baffles the mind,” Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy said in a statement April 17. “We did exactly what we needed to do to bring justice to him swiftly.”
Wygant, 24, faces charges of murder and neglect causing great bodily harm, and he remains in jail with no bond. He tested positive for marijuana following his son’s death.
Wygant’s 22-year-old girlfriend, Jessika Lynn DuFour, and her mother, 55-year-old Geneva May DuFour, also have been charged with child neglect. The day Daymeon died, Jessika DuFour tested positive for illegally obtained prescription drugs.
Neither authorities in Florida nor California would discuss the family in detail Friday. But several letters sent between the two states, obtained by the Miami Herald, show that California social workers contacted their counterparts in Florida on Dec. 30 to inquire whether Geneva DuFour and her adult son had a history of arrests or child abuse. Workers were considering sending the Wygant family to live with DuFour.
After DCF told them Geneva DuFour and her son had a clean record, the Wygant family was flown to Florida, with California paying the bill. Then, on Jan. 6, social worker Tammy Maxey told DCF the family had arrived three days earlier. Maxey requested that investigators in Florida make “a follow up visit...to assess the safety and well-being of the children, and to link the family with community resources.”
“The mother and father have a history of marijuana use. The mother has a history of mental health concerns. The father is said to have anger management issues,” Maxey wrote, adding the family also had been homeless.
“Our agency is concerned that the parents’ homelessness may have caused the child, Daymeon Wygant, to have some developmental delays,” Maxey wrote.
Here is what Maxey did not tell Florida authorities, according to a DCF administrator: Wygant’s and Jessika DuFour’s history in California included “a substantiated finding of child neglect, several other child maltreatment allegations, a history of criminal activity, including crimes involving weapons and sexual battery, mental illness, homelessness and basic neglect of the children’s health and cleanliness.”
The parents, DCF’s Digre said in a letter Friday, had been assessed to be at “very high risk” of harming their children while they remained in Redding.
“Without a full understanding of the history of this family, we were unable to take the necessary steps to protect these children,” Digre wrote. “In the future, we will expect to receive more transparent communication from California counties if they intend to send very high-risk families to our state.”
“Frankly,” Digre added, “it is impossible to understand why Shasta County did not move to shelter these children.”
From the records DCF provided to the Herald, it is difficult to determine what measures the agency undertook to determine whether Wygant’s children were safe.
A DCF spokeswoman said Friday that all notations arising from the agency’s assessment of the family were contained within the margins of Maxey’s Jan. 6 letter. The notes comprise about four handwritten scribbles, including: “no pediatrician,” “no daycare,” “Cody is going to work [and] not using,” “Daymeon teething,” and “don’t trust random people.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/25/4080975/boy-smothered-after-florida-california.html

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/25/4080975/boy-smothered-after-florida-california.html#storylink=cpy

OC Public Schools, Sheriff’s Office, DCF Knew Of Teacher’s Alleged Misconduct

 

ORLANDO, Fla. —Officials from Orange County Public Schools, the Department of Children and Families and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office knew of Jennifer Fichter’s alleged misconduct, but state education officials were not notified, allowing Fichter to teach in Polk County.

Jennifer Fichter's

Fichter was arrested last week after she admitted to a sexual relationship with a child in Polk County. Fichter allegedly admitted that she became pregnant with the child’s baby, but had an abortion, officials said. She was arrested at her home and charged with six counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor. Fichter is an English teacher at Central Florida Aerospace Academy.
Prior to her alleged romance with the Polk County student, Fichter taught language arts at Robinswood Middle School in Orange County from August 2007 until Dec. 19, 2008. Orange County Public School officials started investigating Fichter after a teacher filed a complaint accusing her of discussing her feelings for an eighth-grade male student and texting the student.
According to a Sheriff’s Office report, deputies interviewed the eighth-grade student who said Fichter had texted the student about her feelings about 40-50 times. School officials notified DCF officials, according to the Sheriff’s Office report.
Fitcher reportedly told that teacher “she felt as though the student was her boyfriend and that he made her melt.”
Video: Polk teacher who had sex with student accused of misconduct in Orange County
According to the report, both the teacher who filed the complaint and the eighth-grade boy told school investigators Fichter “texted a student a message that said that she ‘was going to smash’ the student,” and that “Fichter had asked a student if he wanted to be her baby.”
Public Schools Spokeswoman Kathy Marsh said Monday that the county “did not report the case regarding Fichter to the state Department of Education.”
Since the county did not inform state officials, Fichter was able to get a teaching job in Polk County, Florida Department of Education officials said last week.
Following the allegations made against Fichter, public school officials in Orange County told all employees that “No employee of the Orange County Public Schools should engage in any texting or other social media with any OCPS student,” unless the student is the employee’s child or the information is related to a class, athletic or extracurricular activity, Marsh said.
Polk County school officials said last week that they expect Fichter to be fired this week.

http://www.wesh.com/news/oc-public-schools-sheriffs-office-dcf-knew-of-teachers-alleged-misconduct/25586706#ixzz2zbwYBfWi

Money's Not Everything When It Comes To Child Welfare

Jeff Burlew, News-Press Florida media 8:59 a.m. EDT April 14, 2014

Tricky Ricky

Everybody loves children — and Florida lawmakers are ready to spend record amounts on them.
But improving the lot of children will require tough political decisions on top of cash.
Gov. Rick Scott is proposing record spending on K through 12 education and a nearly $60 million increase in early education and care, and he has already signed into law a package of bills designed to keep child predators behind bars.
Lawmakers are moving forward with a major overhaul of child-welfare laws designed to keep children safe from abuse and neglect at the hands of their parents or caregivers, in part by setting new standards and procedures for state child-protection investigators.
But, as the annual Children's Week concludes at the Capitol, some child advocates and civil-rights leaders say the governor and the Republican-led House and Senate are not doing enough to keep children healthy and safe.
Lawmakers have refused to accept federal help in expanding Medicaid, which would bring health-care coverage to more than 1 million Floridians. They have balked at requests to repeal the state's Stand Your Ground law, which its critics say puts black children in harm's way. And they may be wavering on legislation that would eliminate a five-year waiting period for legally residing children of immigrants to get health insurance through Florida KidCare.

Others say it's too early to fully assess how well children will fare this session, because key pieces of legislation — including the child-welfare overhaul — have yet to be finalized.
Ted Granger, president of the United Way of Florida, which sponsors Children's Week, said that, in general, the organization was very pleased with the governor's budget proposals, which dovetail with House and Senate priorities.
"Gov. Scott actually started with a pretty good budget for children and families," Granger said. "And the Legislature has pretty much followed his lead in a lot of ways. The House and Senate have two good bills on child welfare and child protection — the real issue is whether or not the Legislature is going to fund those two bills to the fullest extent or not. If they do, then the bills will have a real positive impact. If they don't, they will be just another piece of legislation in the statute book."
David Lawrence Jr., president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and chair of the Children's Movement of Florida, said he was pleased by the attention children's issues were receiving this year.
"I'm frankly to this point encouraged," said Lawrence, former publisher of the Miami Herald and the Detroit Free Press. "Whether it's child abuse and neglect, whether it's early learning or at least a real discussion on the subject of children of immigrants, some real traction is being made. We've got a good shot for some good things to come out."

Ted Granger

Scott, speaking before a group of business leaders during a Children's Week luncheon Monday in Tallahassee, touted his proposal to spend $1.1 billion on early learning, which includes an increase of $100 per child in the Voluntary Prekindergarten program and a $30 million increase to expand the School Readiness Program to 6,500 students.
"That's the right thing to do," Scott said.
Leah Barber-Heinz, CEO of Florida CHAIN and a project manager for Kids Well Florida, said expanding Medicaid is "extremely important" to the well-being of children. Estimates on the number of uninsured children in Florida range from more than 400,000 to as many as 800,000.
"Research shows over and over that, when parents have health coverage and access to care, they're much more likely to make sure that their children see a doctor when they need to," she said. "We also know that, when adults lack insurance coverage, they can put off seeking help for children when they have physical or behavioral health-care needs. And that can lead to delayed diagnoses that leave children suffering."
Child-welfare bill
Lawmakers were prompted to address the child-welfare issue following media reports last year about the deaths from abuse and neglect of children who were known to the Department of Children and Families. Last month, the Miami Herald published an investigation into the deaths of 477 children whose families had interfaced with DCF at least once over the past five years.
Senate Bill 1666, spearheaded by Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, would make numerous changes to statutes designed to improve the quality of child-protection investigations. Proponents say one of its most important provisions is a requirement that 80 percent of all child-protective investigators and supervisors hired after July 1 by the Department of Children and Families have a bachelor's or master's degree in social work.

The bill made it out of its first committee stop April 2, by a 12-1 vote of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.
On Thursday, however, the Senate Appropriations Committee temporarily postponed it. A House version of the bill is now in appropriations.
Kurt Kelly, president and CEO of the Florida Coalition for Children, said "the jury is still out" on what the child-welfare legislation will look like. But he said the final product will have to have funding of at least $25.4 million for new case-management and case workers and diversion, prevention and intervention services.
"No matter what policy they come up with, they must allocate the necessary resources to provide the services to meet the needs of our children at risk," he said. "We're very supportive of having some positive policy. But at the end of the day, we must have appropriate funding."
Granger said the House bill includes $4.5 million for Healthy Families Florida, a voluntary home-visiting program designed to help parents deal with all of the challenges of parenthood, from preparing healthy meals to disciplining children. He said DCF and third-party evaluators have found that the program eliminated abuse and neglect in more than 95 percent of families that completed the program.
"The child-protection bills try to help children once they've been touched by the system," Granger said. "From the United Way perspective and from a taxpayer perspective, it's much cheaper and better for the child and better for the families to try to address the problems before they are ever touched by the system."
Jim Akin, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers Florida chapter, said the child-welfare bills could bring profound change as long as they aren't "watered down" or inadequately funded.
"It may take a while, but I think you would see a whole change in the environment and the culture of child welfare in Florida," he said. "I really think it would have an impact. Fewer deaths — hopefully that would be the end result."

— Jeff Burlew is a writer for the Tallahassee Democrat

http://www.news-press.com/story/news/2014/04/13/moneys-everything-comes-child-welfare/7683653/

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/

DCF Worker Accused Of Falsifying Well-Being Report

ORLANDO, Fla. —

Posted: 3:12 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014

Investigators said a 38-year-old woman was supposed to be checking up on some of the most vulnerable victims of child abuse and neglect but instead lied in her paperwork to avoid being fired.

Margaret McCalman

Margaret McCalman told investigators at the Department of Children and Families she was exhausted from her case load and typed up a false home visit in her computer to avoid missing a required visit.
McCalman and others in her position are required to go out and investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect, authorities said.
According to the arrest warrant, McCalman documented a visit in May 2012 to a home with at least two children.
In the report, it was written that the children were seen without abuse and that the house was cluttered but no major hazards were seen.
The catch, according to payroll data, is that McCalman wasn’t working that day.
Channel 9′s Karla Ray went to McCalman’s home on Wednesday to ask why she would put children’s lives at risk by making up information about their well-being, but no one came to the door.
McCalman quit her job at DCF month after her internal investigation started.

“We absolutely do not tolerate the falsification of child protective records,” said a DCF spokeswoman. “We have a zero tolerance for it.”
If convicted, McCalman could face prison time.
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/dcf-worker-accused-falsifying-well-being-report/ndhJx/

Local Lawmakers Grapple With Changing The Culture At DCF

TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) – Both chambers of the Legislature took up child-welfare reform Tuesday, hearing from a wide range of experts with research about staff turnover and caseloads.

But one number stood out: 432, the number of Florida children who died of abuse and neglect in 2012, according to Pam Graham, a social work professor at Florida State University.
Graham, who spoke to the House Healthy Families Subcommittee, served on the State Child Abuse Death Review Committee. Of the 432 children who died in 2012, she said, 40 percent were already involved with the Department of Children and Families.
“It pains me that if the right people had been helping those families, a lot of the deaths could have been prevented,” Graham said.
The number of child deaths usually mentioned in legislative committees is 40, the number that the Casey Family Programs, a policy group, reviewed after a series of child deaths last year.
And that’s how many it took to prompt legislative leaders to vow to overhaul the child-welfare system.
“The public is crying out to us to have revolutionary reform,” said Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a Hollywood Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee. “We don’t want to keep reading about children’s deaths. …However, we’re going to do it in a pragmatic way, step by step.”
Sobel’s panel and the House Healthy Families Subcommittee examined such steps as requiring all new child-protective investigators to have social-work degrees and helping the current investigators get such degrees.
Not everyone who spoke to the lawmakers agreed on how to fix the workplace culture at DCF, but virtually all said it had to be done.
“The thing that we keep coming back to is a lack of fraternity,” Mike Watkins, chief executive officer of Big Bend Community Based Care, told the Senate panel.
To the House panel, Mary Alice Nye, of the Legislature’s Office of Program Policy and Government Accountability, said child-protective investigators report feeling pressured to close cases within a 30-day window and to get all of their work done without filing for overtime pay.
The investigators “felt that they were less and less able to use their knowledge and expertise in decision-making,” Nye said.
They also reported spending 50 to 80 percent amount of their time on administrative tasks and expressed concern about going into homes where there had been violence, difficulty in getting law enforcement officers to meet them there and using their own cars for work, which could identify them in small communities.
“They generally indicated they felt support from their immediate (supervisor) but not from DCF or the lead (community-based care) agencies,” Nye said.
DCF Interim Secretary Esther Jacobo said a program to pair child-protective investigators was being piloted in cases where a child is 3 years old or younger, has a prior DCF history and other family risk factors such as domestic violence, mental illness or substance abuse.
Jacobo said the pilot has been so successful that it will go statewide. Gov. Rick Scott has recommended hiring 400 additional child protective investigators, bringing their caseloads down to 10 apiece.
Sobel said it’s important for state agencies to be more consistent.
“Stop the turnover and create a workforce that likes where they’re working and enjoys what they do and accomplishes a lot,” she said. “For the sake of the kids, we have to do this.”
According to OPPAGA, the turnover for child-protective investigators in Florida is 20 percent. For the case managers who provide services at the local level, it’s 30 percent.
“The News Service of Florida’s Margie Menzel contributed to this report.”

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/02/11/lawmakers-grapple-with-changing-the-culture-at-dcf/

Scott Seeks $31 Million Bump In DCF Funding For Child Protection

Gov. Scott to propose increased funds for child protection

By Mary Ellen Klas

Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

“Editor’s Note: We believe the constant flow of federal funding is the very reason that CPS is so corrupt. They are ALREADY taking/stealing children for baseless reasons and destroying families each and every day. A pay increase and promotion only pushes them to steal more children.”

In an effort to repair his child welfare track record, Gov. Rick Scott will announce Tuesday in Miami that he is steering $31 million in additional money to child protection efforts, a move aimed at reducing caseloads and increasing oversight of vulnerable children in Florida.

Ticky Ricky

The announcement comes in the wake of dozens of child deaths from abuse and neglect in the past year, and amid calls for reform of the Department of Children & Families from the non-profit Casey Family Foundation and Democrats in the Legislature.
“While DCF has made significant changes to protect children, we still have much to do to protect the most vulnerable among us,’’ the governor said in a statement on Monday. “Even one child death is a death too many.”
The governor will also announce that he will steer an additional $8 million to sheriff’s offices to investigate child abuse complaints, a turnabout for the governor who recommended a $17 million reduction in the grants to sheriffs for child protective efforts in his 2013-14 budget proposal.
The governor’s proposal, which is only a recommendation to the Legislature, includes restoring money for Substance Abuse and Mental Health programs, services that play a vital role in reducing child abuse, the agency said in a statement released to the Herald/Times on Monday.
The governor said his “historic increase to DCF funding” will pay for the hiring of 400 additional child protective investigators. The proposal also aims to reduce caseloads for child protective investigators from the current 13.3 cases per investigator to 10, and institute two-person teams in cases involving children under age 4 when the family has a history of domestic violence, substance abuse or mental illness, the statement said.
The program would be modeled after a pilot program DCF is currently running using paired investigators for high-risk cases in Miami-Dade and Polk counties.
DCF interim Secretary Esther Jacobo said she is confident the proposals “will keep Florida children safe.”

DCF interim Secretary Esther Jacobo

“Armed with input from national experts and data to back up our proposals, we are prepared to ensure that these funds will be laser focused on protecting children who are most at-risk,” Jacobo said in the statement.
The governor’s recommendation also includes restoring 26 of the 72 quality assurance positions that were cut under former DCF Secretary David Wilkins. Child advocates blame those cuts for contributing to some of the child deaths.
Another 50 current investigator positions would be eligible for career advancement under a new “Child Protective Master Practitioner” plan that would reward case workers with the most knowledge and experience.
The Casey Family Programs reviewed 40 child deaths last year and concluded that both DCF and community-based care organizations should focus more resources on providing services aimed at stabilizing families to prevent abuse.
The governor’s track record in his previous budget requests to the Legislature has been to reduce funding to the child welfare agency. In his first budget proposal in the 2011-12 budget year, for example, the governor recommended reducing funding for DCF by $238 million below its current levels at the time.
In 2011-12, Scott recommended increasing the agency budget by $1.7 million over the level approved by lawmakers a year before but, in 2013-14, he recommended reducing the budget again — by $75.7 million — below what lawmakers had approved the year before.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/13/3869179/gov-scott-to-propose-increased.html#storylink=cpy

The raw truth about
power and ambition in Florida.