U.S Government- The Largest Human Trafficker Of Children In The World.

U.S Government- The Largest Human Trafficker Of Children In The World.

In the United States, most Americans have no idea and extent of the horrible things that our Federal, state, county and local governments do to it's own citizens especially children. Now I fully realize there are real child abuse cases and they need to be dealt with swiftly and accordingly however most child “neglect and abuse” cases in America are complete fabrications made for the benefit of selling children for government profit. Now you would think that with all the legislation in the USA and laws that have been passed regarding so called “protection” of it's own citizens and all the hollering and complaining our own government does in the United Nations against other nations such as China, Thailand, the Philippines, India and the like in regards to child trafficking, that in fact our government would have a spotless record and be an outstanding example of how to protect children from human trafficking. However, just the opposite holds true, yes the word hypocritical can and should be appropriately applied here to all American Government agencies in regards to all U.S children. If one just took a few minutes to do just a little research on this important subject matter, you would discover indeed that our American children are being bought and sold by our own government and just as sadly, the Christian Community does very little about it !

Something else most Americans are not well enough informed about nor take Biblical action is that their hard earned tax dollars support various state, county and local programs where by children are “legally” stolen for profit. How can this be you ask ? Fairly simple as it turns out; The culprit is the Federal Title IV programs where by states, counties and local municipalities/ Family Courts and other courts as well as foster and adoption agencies are that are awarded billions of tax dollars annually to take children from good and healthy parents. Were you aware of actual “head hunters” who are are also employed through social services and various government agencies that look for children to steal ? I'll bet you(if I were a betting man) that you were unaware of this. You see, the system operates so that state, county and it's social services agencies can easily take children from good parents and make a huge financial windfall on each child taken. Children are taken from good parents through false allegations of abuse and the children are later often times sold to foster care agencies or adoption agencies. Federal monies are easily gained as the more children that are as identified (often times) as being “in crisis”(These children are often from poor families and typically blonde in hair color and also have blue colored eyes), the more cash courts and governments make. Profiteering at the expense of children's lives though use of false abuse and or neglect allegations against parents has made many a judge, lawyer, court and government employee rich through these government monies as well. Now you may be asking yourself, what kind of evil person does, this? Well, It's a well documented fact that many Child Protection Workers, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, cops, teachers, judges, lawyers lie to snatch children from millions of parents in the USA each year. It's the cold hard cash that attracts these evilist's to do such diabolical and wicked things as take lovely children from great mommy's and daddy's. See video- http://youtu.be/ztEqMounuRU

Domestic Violence Workers have also been known to get into the act since it is their desire to eliminate men and families as God intended anyway, you can see these Domestic Violence workers visiting schools talking with teachers, children and school officials trying to drum up business. They also get a huge chunk of Title IV Federal monies as well and just like the other fore mentioned evilist's who participate in stealing children for cash, many of these Domestic Violence Workers also lie to gain cash. It's a feeding frenzy for the evilist's these days. Our legislators and even those elected to to the Executive branch are well informed of the child stealing and profits made but these government leaders by and large want nothing to do with changing the system and ridding the lies. Corrupt Federal Legislators like Charles Shummer are quite content with the billions of dollars that flows from our Federal Government to these legislators pockets and their home political districts. Millions of children are stolen illegally from corrupt government agents and there is little protection in the law from them. I suppose if you had enough money or have a personal relationship with one of these corrupt government leaders, a phone call to the “right people” could be made on you and your child's behalf to rescue them from the claws of these wicked people but in reality, but who of us has a political friend and ally to get what is already guaranteed to us in our US Constitution ? We should not have to be concerned about, nor have fear that our child will hurt themselves playing or have an accident and then CPS, Government agents, cops, teachers, DV workers and the like will be like vultures that will come and take away our child making false allegations of abuse against us- http://youtu.be/y9k-1Du74mg . Please remember, if you ever are hauled into Family Court or in front of CPS agencies, the law says everything must be decided “in the best interest of the child” meaning the government can do anything it wants at anytime with your child and you have NO legitimate claim nor recourse. You are at the total mercy of the judge and or government agency. As a parent, you can be court ordered for all sorts of psychological, physical and other tests, all returned finding you without fault or issue yet for no real or appropriate reason, your children can still be taken away from you, and that includes having your parental rights terminated for no real or appropriate reason as well.

Parents who home school their children and or Christians in the USA are especially vulnerable to being falsely accused of abuse these days and should take special note of what I am sharing here and prepare for action to protect their children and their families at all costs ! Please note that anytime the government cannot control, manipulate or indoctrinate persons with government propaganda, the entire family becomes suspect and is put on a watch list by various government agents who look for an open door to destroy the family unit. The family unit in America is in a purposeful cross hairs for destruction by government paid workers with their wealth of taxpayer funded Federal Title IV programs.

As well, In case you were uninformed, children in foster care and adoption agencies are inappropriately and horrifically often times being drugged up with psychotropic medications as young as three years old http://youtu.be/ISFPJL66p4c . I can tell you as a professional therapist that there is no child at the age of 3 that will need to be medicated with psychotropic medications for any reason-ever ! The only and sole purpose of medicating the vast majority of children while in foster care and or in foster care type housing is to cause them to be domicile, that is to force the children in care foster care more compliant and more easily to manipulate. The social experiments that have been occurring especially with our boys in schools for years now have also been extended to all children and adolescents in foster care and adoption agencies. Since Feminists have been the ones mostly insistent to destroy the male gender, they are also the main force behind our male children with mental health diagnosis such as Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder then pollute their minds with psychotropic medications such as Ritalin. These anti-christian women's groups for years now have looked to destroy God's plan for the family, there are many so called trained mental health professionals that are in place already to destroy more children as children are often seen as a liability and not an asset to these feminists.

We are commanded by our Lord Jesus to pray for our enemies and that we must do but unless Biblical Christians get up off their butt's soon and fight back at all costs, most of our children will be gone. There are over 50 million children that have been murdered through abortion in the USA so children living outside the womb are the next obvious target by evilist's. We need Godly men of action(James 2:17-20).This is and can be a very frighting situation and season for the ill equipped Christian and or family. Families should take this article as a very serious call to action and a warning to beware of just what the U.S and all it's states, counties and local governments are involved in. The US and it's states governments are largely not interested in helping people in their God given liberties of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as documented in our Deceleration Of Independence. The question for you and I has become; do you love your children and family enough for America to once again become “home of the brave” ? Meaning that we stand up and protect our children and families from wickedness, or do we stand aside and let evilist's go on with their onslaught against our family, friends and neighbors ???

Please be sure to view all three of the videos in this article. It will hopefully ignite your soul to do something to fight back and get our children back !

Psalms 37:17 For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholdeth the righteous.

Pastor Paul Waldmiller~Black Robe Regiment Pastor


http://blackroberegimentpastor.blogspot.com/2012/02/us-government-largest-human-trafficker.html

Rewriting Rules On Reunification Of Troubled Florida Families

The Legislature’s child welfare overhaul bill, awaiting Gov. Rick Scott’s signature, would make it harder for the state to reunify children with dangerous, drug-addled parents.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/24/4136590/when-child-parent-reunification.html#storylink=cpy

 

By Audra D.S. Burch and Carol Marbin Miller aburch@MiamiHerald.com

 

Over a dozen turbulent years, Kaylee Ann Rice was in and out of state care as her troubled mom parented in a fog of drugs and violence. Courtney Coughlin’s rap sheet stretches 19 pages, peppered with weapons, battery and drug charges. She had been to jail twice, attempted suicide twice and was committed once.
Yet Kaylee, who first came to the attention of state child welfare authorities as an infant, was always returned to her mother.
The cycle ended when Kaylee was killed. Three days after her 12th birthday, she died after her mother hurtled through a red light at 90 miles per hour while fleeing police. She was trying to cash a stolen check. The girl was not wearing a seat-belt.
When Florida lawmakers overhauled the state’s child protection laws this session, they also took aim at the state Department of Children & Families’ sometimes ill-fated decisions to return vulnerable youngsters to drug-abusing and dangerous parents.
The child welfare bill, still awaiting Gov. Rick Scott’s signature, gives Community Based Care groups — private organizations contracted by DCF to provide child welfare social services — a chance to raise objections if they think reunification will leave a child in danger.
“We wanted to have a role in the conversation about reunification,’’ said Kurt Kelly, who heads the Florida Coalition for Children, which represents the state’s CBCs. “Because we are providing the services, we are often the closest to the families and can contribute to the decision about whether a child can be safely reunified.’’
Over the past five years, more than two dozen children have died after either they or an older sibling were reunited with volatile, lawless or drug-using parents. The parents were shown mercy. The children weren’t.
In the most recent case, a Sanford toddler, Tariji Gordon, was killed three months after she was returned to her troubled mother, who had been stripped of custody after smothering Tariji’s twin brother. The first death was originally ruled accidental, but it appears to be under investigation again.
“The decision to reunify is similar to the decision to remove; it’s the most important decision we make in the life of a case. Sometimes we make the decision to reunify parents because they have completed the list of tasks that was given to them,’’ said DCF interim Secretary Mike Carroll. “But there is not a whole lot of analysis to determine whether the tasks resulted in a change in behavior, or mitigated the safety concerns that led us to remove the child in the first place.”

He added: “We have to get better, particularly when the case is high risk.”
The story of DCF reunifications is not as much in the numbers as the quality of some of the investigations and the decision-making that preceded them. Even when the agency takes a child away from the family — a rare occurrence — it will often return the child to his or her abuser after a parenting class or the signing of a promissory pledge.
State Sen. Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring, who co-wrote the overhaul bill, said she didn’t realize the state had an issue with risky reunifications until recently, following Tariji’s death. Representatives of Central Florida private foster care agencies visited her, and expressed deep concerns about DCF’s reluctance to give them a seat at the table when decisions were made on whether to return children to their parents.
“They were telling me how many cases they had where they would recommend that a child not be reunified, yet the data and documentation was never heard in court. They would submit it to DCF, and they would not be able to make it available” to a judge, said the Republican, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services. “I was horrified by what was going on.”
Tariji’s death
That conflict came into sharp focus with the death of Tariji. The 2-year-old and her surviving siblings were returned to their mother, Rachel Fryer, after two years of living in a foster home. Early on, a court-appointed guardian ad-litem in the case expressed concern about Fryer’s ability to provide for her family. Tariji was dead within three months of moving back with Fryer, who is now in jail, charged in her daughter’s death.
Fryer is accused of killing the girl, then stuffing her body in a suitcase and burying her in a shallow grave in Putnam County, 50 miles from her Sanford home. Fryer denies the allegation, saying she found Tariji unresponsive and tried to save her with CPR and asthma medication.
Less than three years earlier, Fryer suffocated Tariji’s twin, Tavont’ae, as mother and son slept together on a couch. After the 2-month-old’s death, DCF asked a judge to permanently sever Fryer’s parental rights to her four surviving children — she had surrendered her rights to two other older children in an earlier, drug-related case. After the infant’s death was ruled an accident, Tariji and the three siblings were returned to their mother in November, 2013. She died in February.
In January, the guardian — tasked with advocating for the best interest of the child — requested a hearing on Tariji and her siblings’ reunification, citing “pressing concerns.” It was never scheduled.
In a court hearing weeks before, on Dec. 9, the guardian told a judge she believed the children were content and showed Fryer affection, but she was concerned about the mother. “The children are happy to be home with their mother. There are some concerns about the mother’s stability. Her income, I believe, is based on student loans...she has been having difficulty paying rent and having funds for food in less than a month that the kids have been home,’’ the advocate said.
At the same hearing, a DCF lawyer said there were no issues related to the reunification or the children’s safety. The judge signed off on DCF’s plan to reunite Fryer, 32, permanently with her four children, but said she wanted the case to be closely monitored. A final review of the case was to be set for this month.
Tracking numbers

In 2007, DCF completed 10,877 reunifications of children with their parents. There was an average of 24,646 children in care that year at any given time. As DCF pursued a policy of reducing the number of children in out-of-home care over the next several years, reunifications dropped, because there were fewer children to reunify. In 2008, DCF approved 9,252 reunifications; 7,686 in 2009. The number of reunifications cases has essentially remained flat since 2010 at between 5,877 in 2010 and 6,806 in 2012.
Three years ago, William De Jesus knocked on the door of a Canadian couple’s trailer in a snowbird community, the beginning of a murderous rampage in Deerfield Beach in which the 41-year-old man killed the owner and took the owner’s wife hostage. He stabbed his own wife and sons and then killed himself. De Jesus’ oldest son, Jeshiah, who was autistic, died. The 7-year-old younger brother was gravely injured with a knife blade lodged in his head. The boys’ mother, 37-year-old Deana Beauchamp, was also injured.
She would later be convicted of aggravated manslaughter and child neglect in the knife attack and is serving a 10-year sentence for the crime of not protecting her children.
The ‘Monster’
The bloodshed happened a year after DCF reunited the boys with their father, though the agency had verified allegations that De Jesus was both violent and abusive. The younger son told child welfare authorities that he had recurring nightmares and called his father the “Monster.”
This was not the first time De Jesus had been in trouble. After accusations of abusing his ex-wife and their children from a previous marriage several years before, New York had state permanently severed De Jesus’ parental rights.
De Jesus and his new family — Beauchamp, Jeshiah and the youngest boy — came to the attention of Florida child welfare authorities in the fall of 2007. A child abuse hotline report accused the dad of choking Beauchamp during a drinking binge. She told DCF investigators that the incident was just the latest assault over a period of years.
DCF responded by asking a judge to order the family to accept the agency’s help and supervision, but left the boys in the home. The following year, Beauchamp left De Jesus and moved into a domestic violence shelter. She told authorities they had both molested their sons repeatedly, an allegation that had arisen in New York, as well.

The boys were removed from the home immediately. While in foster care, more troubling allegations emerged. A therapist and court-appointed guardian separately reported witnessing De Jesus inappropriately touch one of the boys’ private area multiple times. At the same time, Beauchamp had returned to her husband and recanted her molestation allegations.
The agency reunified the family, explaining that it lacked “convincing evidence” that De Jesus and Beauchamp were unfit to parent — over the objection of those working with the family. DCF ended its involvement in December 2010. Jeshiah was killed nearly 14 months later.
By the time Kaylee Rice was 6 months old, she was already on DCF’s radar. The first report evoked a theme that would repeat over and over: Kaylee’s parents, DCF was told, used drugs and fought with each other. During the next 11 years, Kaylee would be the subject of 23 calls to the child abuse hotline, resulting in 15 investigations.
Most of the reports involved mother Courtney Coughlin’s drug addictions, which a DCF report said began when she was 12. In all, Coughlin reportedly abused the painkillers oxycodone and Lortab, Xanax, the anti-anxiety drug Klonopin and Ecstacy. In 2003, DCF was told Coughlin slept all day, and Kaylee had to be fished out of a pool before drowning.
Coughlin’s criminal history portrays a life of drug abuse and violence. Beginning in 1997, she faced charges of cocaine, marijuana, synthetic narcotic and pill possession, sale of hallucinogens, aggravated battery, and aggravated assault with intent to kill, among others.
DCF administrators took Kaylee from her mother at least twice — the state records are unclear about additional removals. And Kaylee lived with grandparents when her mother was incarcerated.
Kaylee’s last removal occurred in 2004, when Coughlin was arrested on drug charges. In late 2008, the girl’s grandmother, who was caring for her while Coughlin was in prison, fell and broke her hip. DCF returned Kaylee to her newly released mom, with a variety of counseling and parenting services.
Three months after DCF disengaged from the family, the agency got a new report in June 2010: Coughlin was once again using drugs, had attempted suicide, and had been committed for psychiatric treatment. Though Coughlin refused to cooperate with the resulting investigation, and declined a drug test, DCF took no action to protect Kaylee.
In the days before Kaylee died, her mother had written a series of bad checks that she had stolen from a local woman, police said. Then, on July 11, 2011, Coughlin pulled into the drive-through lane of a Lynn Haven credit union. Police were called, and they pulled up behind her just as she was leaving the credit union.
Lynn Haven police stopped their pursuit of Coughlin, a report said, to avoid collateral damage. But she continued to flee, eventually speeding through a red light at about 90 miles-per-hour; Coughlin broadsided another driver, who was critically injured. After the crash, Coughlin tested positive for opiates.
Coughlin pleaded guilty to 20 charges, including negligent manslaughter, reckless driving, and fleeing police. She was sentenced to 25 years. Prison records say the 38-year-old has her daughter’s name, along with hearts, tattooed on her right leg.
Following Kaylee’s death, police wrote, the girl’s maternal grandparents acknowledged that Coughlin “had an ongoing 15-year fight with drug abuse.’’
Yet a four-page internal review of Kaylee’s death concluded that nothing in DCF’s 23-report history with Coughlin was “relevant to the circumstances surrounding the child’s death.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/24/4136590/when-child-parent-reunification.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/24/4136590/when-child-parent-reunification.html#storylink=cpy

DCF-Child-Deaths-Transparency

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Child-welfare officials said Monday that they are creating a new position within the agency in an effort to improve transparency when releasing child-abuse-death records.

The Department of Children and Families has been under intense scrutiny after a series by The Miami Herald highlighted the deaths of 477 children in the past five years. The newspaper accused the agency of recently shifting its internal policies regarding the sharing of information about child deaths in a way that left the records they released so heavily redacted they were nearly useless.
The details surrounding a child's death are typically public, although names of surviving siblings are confidential.
The person who assumes the new role will oversee data gathering and the agency's responses to child deaths, the officials said.
"When tragedies occur, especially those involving children, our response must be consistent, coordinated, compassionate and transparent," new interim secretary Mike Carroll wrote in a memo Monday to regional managers and the news media.

Tricky Ricky

Gov. Rick Scott appointed Carroll last week. Carroll said he hopes to fill the new position within a month, and he added that the new hire must be given the authority to make policy changes as needed.
Carroll also asked regional managers to finalize plans to streamline reporting so that leaders are immediately informed after a child's death and that information in the reports is consistent and accurate. The Herald series noted serious lag times in reporting child deaths in some cases.
Florida lawmakers also want more accountability from the agency. The Legislature passed a bipartisan bill last week requiring DCF to post child-death information on its website, including the date, region, cause of death, what private contractors were involved and the age of the child. Many of the children identified in the newspaper series were under the age of 5.

http://www.tribtown.com/view/story/cf306db4991f45a29a007602d951f1ec/FL--DCF-Child-Deaths-Transparency

DCF, UnderFire, Gets OK To Release Child Death Details

By Mary Ellen Klas, Carol Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch

meklas@MiamiHerald.com

TALLAHASSEE -- Under fierce criticism for withholding information on child deaths, the Department of Children & Families on Friday asked a judge for approval to release new details on 177 children who have died since November.
Ruling from the bench, Leon County Circuit Court Judge Karen Gievers granted the agency’s request to release information to the Miami Herald from incident reports received by the agency that the department had previously redacted.
But DCF Deputy General Counsel John Jackson said the agency will continue to withhold similar information in the future. He said the agency had erroneously turned over hundreds of documents to the Herald in the past year and it was now seeking the court’s permission to release the redacted information to help improve public confidence in the agency.

 “This is not only a matter of satisfying media interests. It is an acknowledgment by the department that getting this information out there will ultimately improve the process and improve the department,” Jackson told the court during the 20-minute hearing.
The Herald’s year-long investigation of Florida’s child welfare system led to the Innocents Lost series, which chronicled the deaths of 477 children over the past six years from abuse and neglect whose families had been known to DCF.
The Herald reported last week that after the series was published, DCF changed its policy and heavily redacted information provided in incident reports that it had previously released — including details of the child’s death and the family’s prior history with DCF. To illustrate, the Herald published side-by-side snapshots of the same report, one just released and showing nearly every word censored; the other, from last year, with modest redactions.
“The article raised questions about the department’s handling of the incident reports and created a concern that the department was not being forthcoming with information on these children or on these children’s families,” Jackson said.

The article also sparked immediate criticism from legislators, who were in the midst of rewriting the state’s child welfare laws to overhaul the way DCF handles and investigates child deaths.
Jackson said the news reports “dinged the agency,” and interim DCF Secretary Mike Carroll, who is in his second week on the job, has since announced he is looking at “revamping the entire death review process.”
“All this put together, we think, that it is [imperative] that we have the trust of the public that we can do this and we can do it right,” Jackson said. “We can do what the Legislature intends and we can do right by Florida’s kids. And so we do not want hanging over our head the fact that there is information that we are holding back because it brings suspicion over the department that we are not being transparent.”
The department asked the court to release of 277 pages, relating to 110 of the 177 cases sought by the Herald, to help the department show that it is willing to “fix problems, ” improve public awareness and restore public confidence in its ability to protect children, Jackson said.
Unlike death review reports, which provide details on the conclusions of the agency’s investigations into the deaths, the incident reports are part of the investigative record used to help the agency determine whether a death occurred from abuse or neglect, Jackson said. The incident reports often include information about the mental health and sexual abuse of siblings and parents, which the agency believes should remain confidential.
“Some of them [incident reports] did have more information released than we believe we should have released at the time,” Jackson told the court.

He said the agency continues to exclude from the public anything regarding the mental health or sexual abuse of siblings and specific information about parents when they were children.
“We’re asking more permission, not approval,” Jackson told Gievers.
Gievers said she reviewed all the documents, had read the Innocents Lost series, and immediately ordered the documents released.
“I did not see anything in my review that should not be released,” she said, suggesting the agency immediately provide the Herald with the documents. At first Jackson said he did not have a duplicate, but later he provided one.
According to a preliminary Herald review of the previously redacted records, the agency initially excluded information that revealed that several of the families whose children died in the past six months had a prior case record with DCF.
The Innocents Lost series found that the department repeatedly ignored warning signs that parents of at-risk children were incapable of keeping their children safe, prompting the Legislature to increase staff and training of abuse investigators, crack down on so-called “safety plans,” — written promises by parents to discontinue behavior that endangers their kids — and strengthen oversight of the agency.
“The parents have two prior reports as alleged perpetrators,’’ wrote one report on a child who died in December. It referred to domestic abuse incidents in 2013 and 2010 involving the children and noted that the 2010 “case was closed with no services offered.”
Gievers made it clear that she was not ruling on whether the information the department continues to shield is appropriate, but was only deciding whether what it was proposing to release violated state confidentiality laws.

After the hearing, Jackson said his agency is attempting to balance the public’s right to know and the privacy rights of children and families.
“The scrutiny on the department and the individuals at the department — we can take that in exchange for us being able to do our job better,” he said. “At the same time, we need to protect the rights of our clients.”

 http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/09/4108729/dcf-under-fire-gets-ok-to-release.html#storylink=cpy

Action News Investigates Changes At DCF

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Florida is one of the few states that puts the majority of its federal dollars toward providing services to keep Florida families together instead of spending the money on fostering children and removing the children from the home permanently.

The Department of Children and Family Services calls it the family redesign program.



According to DCF, in Duval, Clay, and Nassau counties the redesign program is working. They say just 10 percent of families reunited lead to new charges of abuse or neglect.

However we found the program does not always work.

It has been more than two months since 2-year-old Tariji Gordon was found dead in a suitcase in Putnam County.

Her mother, Rachel Fryer is charged with aggravated child neglect.  The toddler had been in foster care 3 months earlier after her brother was killed in an apparent "co-sleeping" accident.
Gordon was reunited with her mother through DCF’s redesign program.

It is a program DCF’s John Harrell says has helped keep thousands of families together since its’ implementation back in 2007.

"The percentage of children who are re-abused within six months of those services provided is only about 6 percent,” said DCF Communications Director John Harrell.

"I am actually thankful for them stepping in the way they did,” said Stephanie Beams.

After an anonymous tip was put into DCF, Stephanie Beams almost lost Kelsey and her four other children last year.

"I wanted to find a job and everything but I could not really do so because I was sitting here with three kids all day,” said Stephanie Beams.

"They did have electric or water for a month with five kids in the summer time.  On top of that the youngest child has disabilities and the middle two were not in school,” said Family and Support Services caseworker Allyson Kidd.

DCF stepped in and a judge decided rather than rip five kids from their mother who was struggling financially, they enrolled Beams and her children in the redesign program.

"I have the youngest one with medical disabilities in a medical daycare.  I  made sure that the mom is in mental health services, the father is getting treatment, the family really needed budgeting services,” said Kidd.

But what about that small percentage of kids like Tariji Gordon who are re-abused?

"Would you consider that a failure of the redesign,” asked Action News Reporter Jessie McDonough.

"A judge may decide on reunification.  It does not guarantee that there might be further issues down the line,” said Harrell.

According to DCF, they have no evidence to suggest any child deaths for kids they oversee in Clay or Nassau County last year.
There were six child deaths in Duval County. Four were homicides. Two were determined to be neglect.

None of those children had previously been in foster care.

DCF says the Casey Family Programs has provided funding and technical assistance with the redesign project.

http://www.fox30jax.com/content/topstories/story/Action-News-Investigates-changes-at-DCF/ID9CTny-uUuSucmxj1fonQ.cspx

Changes Ahead In Child Welfare, But Enough?

Three important things to know about the Florida Department of Children and Families:
• The department has a new leader.
• The Legislature is about to throw a lot more money, resources and manpower at the department in hopes of stemming a tidal wave of child deaths.

• And nobody really knows whether the DCF is yet headed in the right direction — nor will we for quite a while.
A new boss, more funds and a bigger staff should be cause for celebration. But it's easy to hope problems will suddenly be solved within a beleaguered department charged with protecting the state's most vulnerable children.
It's much harder to maintain the focus and pressure necessary to transform a long-troubled agency that has witnessed the deaths of 477 children since 2008, as detailed in a recent Miami Herald series. Each child had relied on DCF's protection. Most ended up dying in horrible ways — starved to death, beaten or worse.
Nonetheless, it is good news that reforms are underway and hope brims anew.
On Friday, the Florida Legislature passed a sweeping overhaul of the state's child welfare laws, most notably changing a policy that encouraged keeping families together, which often meant keeping kids in dangerous homes. Also Friday, lawmakers were expected to agree on a budget that provides an extra $47 million to DCF to hire 200 new investigators.

And earlier this week, Gov. Rick Scott announced his intention to appoint Mike Carroll as the next interim DCF Secretary.
Carroll comes with a substantial resume. He has plenty of experience and expertise in the field of child protection. He enjoys a reputation for being a consummate professional, and passionate about the cause. Years ago, he adopted a child from the state child welfare system.
In addition, Carroll is a veteran leader of the agency's Suncoast Region office, which covers 11 counties. He has helped run a number of social service programs, including those that deal with child welfare, substance abuse and mental illness.
Carroll's past should serve him well. Many of the hundreds of child deaths in the past six years involved parents and caregivers battling alcohol, drug and mental health demons.

Still, it's surprising the governor tapped someone from within a department mired in systemic problems that date back years.
It's also a head-scratcher that Scott chose to make him interim secretary, the third change in leadership in under a year and the sixth in the past 10 years. Florida's child welfare agency is in desperate need of stable leadership, and Scott had nearly a year to find a permanent replacement.
That said, it is a good sign the Secretary-designate is embracing wholesale change. He intends to reduce caseloads for child abuse investigators and address employee turnover. He is calling for a culture change. Most importantly, like state lawmakers, he also supports changing the agency's "family preservation" policy, which has put so many children at risk.
With big changes and more cash on the way, here's hoping Carroll provides a focus that puts DCF on the right path — and that vulnerable children finally have the right protector.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-05-02/news/fl-editorial-new-dcf-secretary-dv-20140502_1_child-welfare-child-deaths-suncoast-region

Did DCF The State Fail These Children?

ORLANDO, Fla. —

9 Investigates combed through 10 years' worth of state records and found a deadly problem with Florida's child care system.
State Department of Children & Families records show 16 children in central Florida died during that time period after the agency created to protect them reunited the children with parents who had previous problems identified by DCF.

WFTV's Tim Barber asked DCF officials what, if anything, can be done to prevent at-risk children from being placed back inside dangerous homes?
But first, Barber visited the gravesite of Tariji Gordon, nestled beneath the shade of a large tree at Restlawn Cemetery in Sanford. The memorial is made up with fake flowers and a tin plate bearing the dates that book end a life cut short: "Born in 2011. Died in 2014."
Sanford Police said Tariji was beaten to death by her mother, Rachel Fryer, a parent with a lengthy history with DCF and other child welfare organizations.
Just three months before her death, Tariji was safe and happy in a foster home, so 9 Investigates asked DCF Regional Director Bill D’Aiuto how things could go so wrong?
"If Tariji Gordon never went back to Rachel Fryer, would she be dead today?" Barber asked.
"You know, that's, that's a, you know, tough question, you know, and to speculate on that, ah, you know, certainly looking back, possibly," D’Aiuto responded.
The 2-year old was placed with a loving foster mother after investigators determined Fryer accidentally killed Tariji's twin, Tavontae Gordon, in 2011.
In November, however, the state decided the 32-year-old mother of eight was ready to get her kids back.
But Barber discovered the decision to return Tariji to a deadly home environment was not the only one DCF, other child-care agencies and the courts have made through the years.
After sifting through 10 years of records, Barber found 15 other central Florida children died after they were returned to their parents.
Some were accidents, but others like the deaths of Ja’Quez Baker in Marion, Aurelia Juarez in Seminole, and the four Johnson children -- Joel, Jazlyn, Jaxs and Pebbles -- in Brevard were murders.
Since 2008, hundreds of other children died under DCF’s watch across Florida.
Gov. Rick Scott recently pushed to give DCF more than $30 million in new funding, which will likely provide the central Florida area with 145 new investigators, checking up on child abuse and neglect cases.
“That will allow us to bring our caseloads down and allow investigators to spend more time with the families,” D’Aiuto said.
Despite clear warning signs indicating that Fryer could not handle the stress of parenthood, D'Aiuto said no one who worked on Fryer's case has been disciplined in the aftermath of Tariji’s death.
D’Aiuto places blame elsewhere.The death of Tavontae Gordon, Tariji's twin brother, was originally ruled an accident, but since Tariji's death, the Sanford Police Department has reopened that case.
“Who failed or what failed Tariji Gordon?” Barber asked him.
“Rachel Fryer failed Tariji Gordon,” D’Aiuto said.

http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/9-investigates-did-dcf-fail-these-children/nfpqr/

DCF Fails To Deliver On Promises Of Transparency

In the wake of one of the deadliest eras in the history of Florida child welfare, administrators pledged to be more open, even suggesting the added scrutiny could help the agency keep more youngsters safe.
“The answer is to keep this in the public eye,” DCF interim Secretary Esther Jacobo said in January while discussing ways to reform the troubled agency.

But even as lawmakers debated measures to require the Department of Children & Families to be more transparent, the agency has pushed to weaken them and has already quietly adopted internal policies making it harder for the public to track agency actions.

New DCF disclosure policies delay and sharply restrict information provided in official child death reports, a move critics argue could help mask mounting child deaths. The policies are far more rigid than in past years, when the grim details in those reports led to a yearlong Miami Herald investigation called Innocents Lost.
The series, which documented the deaths of 477 children since 2008, exposed systematic flaws in child abuse investigations and the agency’s inadequate response to troubled families.
A new Herald review of nearly 180 child death incident reports since last November found: • In the fall of 2013, as administrators anticipated the series, a child death review coordinator overseeing Broward, Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties ceased filing required “critical incident reports” to the agency’s headquarters in Tallahassee. Then, a week after the Herald series was published, coordinator Frank Perry filed nearly 20 child deaths reports — some of them incidents that occurred months earlier. DCF’s procedures require such reports to be submitted within “one business day.”
• In the midst of the Herald probe, agency administrators implemented a new policy for deleting what they call confidential information from public records — including virtually all details of a child’s death. The new incident reports, submitted since at least last fall, are now significantly narrower — and shorter — than the ones previously provided to the newspaper and public, records show.
• In records obtained by the newspaper this week, the agency redacted all information about DCF’s prior history with troubled families — key details that allow supervisors, and the public, to study whether the agency could have acted differently in the months or years leading up to a child’s death. There was only one exception: a case in which DCF apparently blamed the death on a Miami judge, who overruled an agency recommendation about where an abused child should live.

A DCF spokeswoman, Alexis Lambert, said the case involving the Miami judge was different than the others because it was “an accounting of what occurred in the child’s case but not a word-for-word copy” of confidential records. “The department remains unwavering in our commitment to transparency,’’ Lambert wrote in an email to the Herald Thursday. No Contact But last week, when a Citrus County man smothered his 16-month-old son to death with his bare hands so he could continue playing an online Xbox game, a DCF spokeswoman initially told the Herald the agency had no prior history with the toddler’s parents. In fact, DCF had been told about four months earlier that California social workers had flown the troubled family to Florida amid allegations of drug abuse and homelessness, both red flags.
DCF’s deputy secretary later acknowledged DCF had visited the family, and the investigation that followed was inadequate.
Lawmakers and children’s advocates insist more openness is critical for DCF to improve and to ensure more accurate reporting on child protection cases. The Herald’s series revealed the agency had systematically under-counted the deaths of children whose families were known to the agency,
“Transparency keeps the public informed and holds people responsible — whether it’s the department, the (private foster care agencies), or others,” said state Rep. Gayle Harrell, a Stuart Republican. “Transparency is the antiseptic to keep children safe. The more transparency the better.”
Lawmakers in recent weeks have debated provisions of an agency overhaul bill that would have written greater transparency into state law. But last week, before the Senate reform bill was passed unanimously, DCF staff proposed an amendment to gut the transparency requirements. The measure, late Thursday, was awaiting approval in the House.
Among the amendments the agency sought: changing the time frame the agency is required to investigate a child death from within two business days to “prompt”; eliminating an advisory committee that would provide oversight to the agency’s critical injury responses; and deleting a requirement that DCF post on its website whether a victim was under 5 years of age at the time of his or her death. Such youngsters are the overwhelming majority of children who die of abuse or neglect.

An internal report detailing proposed changes to the Senate bill shows DCF also resisted a proposed provision requiring the agency to post child death incident reports on its website. “The public posting is designed to find fault, and potentially further traumatize families while in crisis,” the agency reasoned.
But child welfare administrators in other states have concluded transparency is primarily about preventing future deaths.
“Florida is now at risk of not playing its role as a public agency being accountable to the public,” said John Mattingly, the commissioner for New York’s Administration for Children’ Services from 2004 until 2011, and now a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation child welfare think tank.
A lack of candor also can hamstring a child welfare agency’s ability to justify adequate funding, Mattingly said. “If you are not being open and honest with yourself about your failings, it’s hard to see how you could expect a public legislature to provide you with what you need to go forward.”
Said Ryan Duffy, a spokesman for Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford: “The whole point of the (House reform) bill is to reduce child deaths, and if we don’t know about them, we can’t do anything about them.”
Questions about DCF’s openness with child death records arose as early as the winter of 2013, though records suggested the effort to clamp down on public information did not gain steam until several months later.
In February 2013, during the investigation of the death of a Lake County infant, Matthew Condatore, a DCF supervisor named Stephanie Weis announced “new rules” for the reporting of child deaths to agency administrators.
Matthew’s death was particularly troubling. Only months before he died, workers had been told in two separate investigation the 11-month-old’s mother left the children for “days at a time” while she consumed a host of drugs, rendering her an unfit caregiver. The Condatore home, a report said, was “disgusting, filthy and dirty,” with bugs and roaches crawling everywhere. The first investigation was completed without DCF taking any action; the second remained open when the child died.
Matthew’s mother passed out while bathing him Feb. 15, 2013. The boy’s 8-year-old sister found him floating in an overflowing bathtub. His mother, whom a report said was “messed up” at the time, lay unconscious near her dead infant.
“No gory details go to (headquarters) regarding the deaths unless they ask for them,” wrote Weis, a community services director, in an internal DCF email. Referring to Matthew’s death, she wrote: “I think this got everyone excited and we are where we are now — hair’s on fire.” “Our incident reports need to be factual, clear, and to the point — no dramatization of the events. We need to look like we know what we are talking about, and we’ve got it under control.”
Beginning last year, the Herald reviewed hundreds of critical incident reports detailing child deaths. This week, the newspaper reviewed 177 new reports. The cases include a child who drowned in an open septic tank, and a teenager who hanged himself in the woods — after DCF had declined to investigate two prior reports concerning his family, and was looking into a third at the time the boy died. Until about wintertime, virtually every report was filed within days of the death, as DCF procedures require.
But sometime around November, records show, DCF Southeast Region death coordinator Frank Perry stopped filing formal death reports for the counties he oversees. Those counties are home to two of the most powerful lawmakers in the state for child protection, Harrell, the Stuart Republican who chairs the House’s Healthy Families Subcommittee, and state Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a Hollywood Democrat who chairs that chamber’s Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee.
Lambert, DCF spokeswoman, said the agency had reviewed its incident reporting system in recent months, after the Herald requested hundreds of the reports, and uncovered “inconsistencies” in their filing.
“These discussions led to a misunderstanding in the Southeast Region that resulted in the gap in reporting you noticed. However, incidents from that region were still being reported timely via email,” she added.
On April 3, Perry submitted four death reports. The next day — exactly one week after the Herald completed its series — he turned in 15 reports, ranging from an i nfant found dead in his Palm Beach County home on Nov. 22 to a boy who shot himself at his stepfather’s house on March 25. Even after Perry submitted the reports, they provided virtually no information. All but two of the incident reports contained four sentences or fewer; 13 of the reports contained one or two sentences.
“Today on 12/26/2013 (redacted) passed away. (Redacted) was found not breathing,” was the extent of an incident report concerning a child death in Broward, which was submitted to the state more than four months after the child died.
An incident report concerning the deaths of two Broward children on March 10 — submitted three weeks later — said only: “On Thursday, 03/06/14, the children drowned and they are currently on life support in pediatric intensive care at Plantation General Hospital. The babysitter went to the bathroom [redacted] died on 3/10/14.”
Incident reports submitted by other investigators also lack details about the family’s past involvement with DCF.
In January, the mother of toddler Kayne Williams left him in the care of her boyfriend while she went to work. Before she returned, Kayne had been beaten nearly to death. Bryan Blalock is accused of beating Kayne so severely that he suffered brain trauma, bruising across his face and body, swelling to his genitals and black eyes. The two-year-old died 12 days later.
On Jan. 15, a child abuse investigator submitted a report to Tallahassee with details of the death and prior agency involvement. That entire portion — about a third of a page of information helpful to put the family’s history in context — was redacted from public view.
Lambert said the agency recently changed its redaction of death records when administrators discovered DCF was inadvertently releasing confidential information, contrary to state law. “ The department redacts records in compliance with the law,” Lambert said.
The hundreds of incident reports obtained by the Herald last year which were considerably more expansive all were redacted by Assistant General Counsel John Jackson, a DCF attorney who is the agency’s public records expert.
In her email to the Herald, Lambert suggested members of the public had recourse if they felt DCF was withholding information concerning the deaths of children: they can sue the agency.
“There is an avenue through the courts for the public or the Herald to obtain the redacted information,” she said.

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