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

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