News Laws Mean Little When DCF Fails Kids

Miami Herald Editorial Board

Last month, Marjorie Dufrene, left, appears in front of Judge Cindy Lederman in Miami. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com

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Two years ago, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law an all-encompassing, highly praised overhaul of the Department of Children & Families, committed to ensuring that the troubled agency could keep children safe, secure and alive.
Angela Dufrene died anyway. Her mother said so in court. “She is dead,” Marjorie Dufrene said, a stunning admission to which she added that the toddler’s body had been thrown in a dumpster.
The law, enacted after the Miami Herald’s series “Innocents Lost” chronicled, in heartbreaking detail, the preventable deaths of almost 500 children in DCF’s care, made saving children, not family preservation, the priority.
And still Angela died.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article97469932.html#storylink=cLawmakers gave DCF a $44 million infusion to hire 270 child-protective investigators and ensure that they were well-educated and properly trained.And still Angela died.

Her tragic case makes clear that the lessons of “Innocents Lost” have been lost themselves. At least five entities, including ChildNet, which provides case management in Broward County, the attorney general’s office and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, knew about the abusive circumstances into which Angela and her twin brother were born. Ms. Dufrene was a violent and abusive parent who herself needed help. She was ill-equipped to deal appropriately with her developmentally disabled son, whom she beat with a belt so severely that he lost sight in one eye, which took surgery to restore. She beat him when he misspelled words; she punched him in the head when he spilled some juice. He was left so bloody that teachers called the state’s abuse hotline, and the child was placed in foster care.
Subsequent calls to the hotline for incidents of domestic abuse between Ms. Dufrene and her husband should have kicked off a seamless intervention on behalf of Angela and her twin brother, who were born while their older brother — and another child, a girl — still were in foster care.
By then, Ms. Dufrene was homeless and had barged in on a friend who had an apartment, refusing to leave. The friend, too, called DCF. But a committee of child-welfare administrators decided that Ms. Dufrene was capable of providing a safe environment for her twins, and she was allowed to leave the hospital after giving birth. There was no followup, no regular home inspections ordered.
The collective lack of common sense is absolutely breathtaking. Instead of considering the breadth of the family’s tortured history, finicky administrators worried that since the twins had never been abused, they could not be removed from the home.

This is putting the safety of children first? In what universe did they expect Ms. Dufrene to become the model mom? This is the lack of critical thinking and skepticism that components of the new law were supposed to address.
It’s infuriating, because we’ve been here before. In 2013, just a year before the sweeping DCF overhaul, the agency instituted something called “the Safety Methodology” to address the inefficient process, fractured work systems and huge level of investigator turnover that, in part, contributed to the death of Nubia Barahona, 10. In 2011, her partially decomposed body was found, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag, in the back of her adoptive father’s pickup truck.
But once more, several agencies banded together to do what’s best for children at risk. They failed miserably, and little Angela Dufrene died.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article97469932.html

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Get To Root Of Crisis In Foster Care DCF's Track Record

Jonathan K. Jaberg, Largo
Get to root of crisis in foster care Aug. 12, editorial
DCF's track record

In this editorial, the Times rightfully called out the Department of Children and Families for failing to adequately place the thousands of children who are removed from parental care every year in Hillsborough County and across the state. What the editorial did not point out is that many judges assigned to handle these cases often act as little more than a rubber stamp for a failing system.

Since 2011, of the more than 4,000 cases in which children were removed from their parents in Hills­borough, only 66 were overturned and only one case this year has reversed the initial determination by the DCF to remove a child. That means that judges have determined the DCF made the right call 99.98 percent of the time. No agency is that good.

That percentage would be less alarming if we were dealing with highly trained professionals who are doing thorough risk assessments and placing children in safe, appropriate homes. The reality is that poorly trained social workers employed by the Sheriff's Office have one of the worst jobs out there. That's why they have such historically abysmal staff retention.

When explaining to people how difficult it is to be a child protective investigator, I use the analogy of the police. When the cops show up, at least someone is happy to see them, usually the person who called. Nobody is happy to see the DCF. Yet that doesn't mean we can allow these removals to go unchecked. Too often, there are services that could have been offered to prevent the need for a removal.

Courts have had a difficult time deciding what to do when the DCF falls down on the job. Does that mean you put a child at risk? Of course not, but let's ask our judges to stop assuming they made the right call every time. Our children deserve better.

Christopher Mulligan, Brooksville
The writer is a third-generation Florida lawyer who primarily handles cases involving children.
Reforms and resources

I have worked with at-risk youth and child protection systems in the Northeast. I am a Guardian ad Litem in Pinellas County and have fostered a teen.

I'm heartened that last year Florida strengthened its child protection laws by placing the interests of abused or neglected children ahead of biological parents' interests. It would have been sensible to concomitantly prepare for the influx of children who would remain out of inappropriate homes as a result. That didn't happen.

From my experience, here are the missing pieces that require funding:
• More compensation and support for foster care families, which in turn will encourage more folks to become foster parents.

• A significant increase in wraparound and in-home services. (New Jersey did this in the 1990s with impressive results).

• Compensation for family members who meet low-income guidelines who otherwise cannot afford to take in a grandchild or niece but would be willing to do so if the support were there.

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/letters/wednesdays-letters-sarcasm-isnt-a-leadership-trait/2289724

NBC2 Investigators: Foster children kept on unapproved overnight stays

NAPLES -
Foster children in Naples were kept overnight in offices and hotels more than a dozen times in 2014, according to a Department of Children and Families Inspector General's report.

Keeping children overnight in offices is against DCF policy and an employee called the event "traumatic."

The unapproved placements were overseen by Family Preservation Services (FPS), now called Pathways, which is a subcontractor of the Children's Network of Southwest Florida (CNSF).

The report from the Inspector General found that employees at FPS were required to spend the night with foster children in the offices. One employee said she did not sleep because "she was concerned that the child's known behavioral problems might surface during the night."

Another employee sent an email stating she "slept in the office on a VERY uncomfortable chair and had no funds to feed the child."

The report found that 11 children were kept in unapproved placements on 15 different occasions during 2014. The children mainly stayed at the FPS Naples office but were also housed at local hotels on three other occasions and the FPS office in Labelle once.

The children were as old as 17 and as young as ten.

CNSF declined an on-camera interview but answered questions from NBC2 via email.
When asked if more children have been kept in offices since the incident was uncovered, a spokesperson wrote, "There have been two occasions when a child stayed in the office overnight. The children were almost 16 and almost 17-year-old teens. No children have stayed in offices or hotels overnight in the past 15 months."
The employee who filed the complaint with DCF also alleged that management at CNSF directed FPS employees to "hide this (office stays) information from the public by not putting any references in [FPS] office emails."

However, the inspector general's report found "no conclusive information was obtained to implicate CNSF or FPS employees in attempting to conceal information about the overnight housing of children in offices or hotels."
In a statement, a CNSF spokesperson wrote, "The Children’s Network of SWFL staff and leadership did not instruct any employees not to discuss overnight office stays in emails."
The underlying issue of the office stays was the lack of resources and ever increasing demand, according to the report, which also stated that before 2014, the amount of children in the CNSF system increased by more than 36 percent. During the same time, 120 new foster parents were recruited, but it still wasn't enough to keep up with demand.

http://www.nbc-2.com/story/32732872/nbc2-investigators-foster-children-kept-on-unapproved-overnight-stays#.V6xA7aLE7gY