Startling Find In Jacksonville's DCF Child Death Investigations

I-TEAM examined 227 death investigations from 8-year span

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Nearly half of the 227 cases of child deaths in Duval County investigated by the Florida Department of Children and Families between 2009 and 2016 involved families already known to DCF investigators, an I-TEAM analysis of data found.

Those in charge of local child protection organizations were unaware the number was that high until shown the analysis by News4Jax.  The startling discovery by the I-TEAM has led to questions about staff experience and oversight within Florida’s child welfare system.

I-TEAM: Startling find in Jacksonville's DCF child death investigations

A privatized system

Florida privatized its child welfare system under then-Gov. Jeb Bush. The Department of Children and Families contracts with different lead agencies -- mostly nonprofits -- in different parts of the state, broken down by judicial circuits. The goal of that process is to have smaller organizations handle child welfare, in each individual community.

Family Support Services of North Florida is the lead agency for child welfare in Duval and Nassau Counties.

In Jacksonville, Family Support Services contracts with four other nonprofits to handle case management for children in troubled homes. Those organizations -- Children's Home Society, Daniel, Jewish Family and Community Services and Neighbor to Family -- also do other work beyond case management.

Lee Kaywork has been the CEO of FSS for eight years. The nonprofit annually oversees the cases of about 1,500-2,000 children who are victims of abuse, neglect or abandonment, largely due to domestic violence, substance abuse or mental health issues.  But the I-TEAM learned that Family Support Services doesn’t actually oversee any individual case involving abuse or neglect.

“I think we’re one of the best in the state,” Kaywork said when asked how child welfare in Jacksonville compares with communities across the state.

Kaywork told the I-TEAM he was confident that his case managers here have enough experience to make critical decisions about the children’s future.

“I'm confident once the child is in care, the safety of the child is being taken care of,” Kaywork said.

Taking a closer look at investigations

The harsh reality uncovered by the I-TEAM is that sometimes those families known to DCF and Family Support Services still end up having children die

Statistics on the DCF’s website show that 48 percent of child deaths the agency investigated in Duval County over the last five years were in families known to the agency. That percentage was higher than the percentages in jurisdictions with large cities, including Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

Child Deaths in Large Florida Counties

County	Total Child Deaths	Percentage of deaths in families known to DCF
Duval	227	48.46%
Orange	222	47.75%
Miami-Dade	278	42.09%
Broward	272	40.44%
Palm Beach	200	35.00%
Hillsborough	279	32.26%

Data compiled from DCF statistics, 2009-2016

“I don’t know that for a fact, but I’ll believe you for the moment,” Kaywork responded when asked about the comparison. “I don't know the detail behind the number.” Kaywork added, “I think that, in most cases, those are going to be investigations that never reached us at Family Support Services.”

The I-TEAM discovered that not to be the case.

In 2015, DCF began deploying a new oversight team -- the Critical Incident Rapid Response Team -- to investigate child fatalities in families that are already known to the state system.  One goal of the team was to figure out how to make improvements. A review of reports from the team’s first year found that Duval County had six CIRRT investigations – more than any other county in the state.

A review of the case of a 6-month-old girl found her death to be sleep-related, but investigators still found issues within the case. One finding cited “high turnover and lack of available staff.”  One child protective investigator also stated he felt he “lacked experience to handle complex cases.” 

The report also found “safety plans were not sufficient” to manage dangers.

In another case investigated by the CIRRT, a 3-month-old girl died after co-sleeping with her mother. The family had been investigated by DCF prior to the girl’s death. 

In this case, the report found “investigations lacked a thorough assessment of the family situation,” and that the “region’s workforce was inexperienced at all staffing levels.” The report went on to say that 57 percent of child protective investigators had less than one year of experience, and 80 percent having less than two years of experience.

In three of the six cases from 2015, Family Support Services was involved. FSS delegated out the case management of the families to some of the nonprofits under them.

“That’s an alarming number. I’m not going to make short sight of it,” Kaywork said when pressed. “That is an alarming number.”

The I-TEAM asked Kaywork how often Family Support Services examines its actions to see if a mistake was made in a child’s case.

“I don’t go to sleep at night without thinking of the children we are serving,” Kaywork said. “That’s our job.”

Kaywork acknowledged the system is not perfect.

“It’s a child welfare system. We are at the tail end of a lot of woes of our society,” Kaywork said.

In recent years another societal issue -- opioid addiction -- has had an effect on the child welfare system. 

Kaywork said the bulk of child removals from custody now are tied to opiate use, accounting for the case of 75 to 80 percent of the children taken from their homes. That’s up from 40 percent in the past.

Family Support Services, a fully accredited organization, has been the local lead agency for foster care, adoption, and family services since 2001. Kaywork explained their state-mandated goal is to reunify families, but the I-TEAM found that happens in less than half of their cases.

In 2013 and 2014, more children were adopted out than reunified. In 2015 and 2016 there were fewer adoptions, but still only 35 percent of families were reunified.

Kaywork said it’s a delicate and difficult balance.

“There is nothing more traumatic to a child than being removed from their parent,” Kaywork explained.  “Nothing. They will never recover from it.”

Thursday afternoon DCF responded to the I-TEAM analysis with a statement:

Child safety is the first priority of the Florida Department of Children and Families and our staff and partners are entrusted with a sacred mission to protect the vulnerable and aide family recovery and resiliency. Every case of suspected abuse or neglect called into the Florida Abuse Hotline is carefully evaluated based on statutory criteria to be accepted for investigation. Every child death, regardless of family situation or the community, is a devastating tragedy. DCF takes every child fatality very seriously and is absolutely committed to reducing preventable child deaths."

http://www.news4jax.com/news/investigations/48-of-duval-countys-child-deaths-investigated-by-dcf-from-known-cases 

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

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article97469932.html#storylink=cpy

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

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article97469932.html#storylink=cpy

Sexually Trafficked Girl Endures New Torment — In Foster Care

By Carol Marbin Miller
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

It was the kind of encounter that gives child welfare judges nightmares: A 25-year-old male “transporter” with all of three days on the job, and no real background check. And a 17-year-old girl who wound up in foster care partly because she had fallen victim to forced prostitution.
When the eight-hour drive was over, the foster child had been victimized yet again, and the driver was under investigation for rape.

It was also the kind of encounter that prompts child welfare judges to write scathing orders, which is what Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia did late last month, when she called the actions of a private social service agency borderline “reckless.”
“The Court feels impotent as to what actions or sanctions it can legally take,” Sampedro-Iglesia wrote in an order dated May 29. “Nothing that this Court can do or order the agency to do can fix all the wrongs this child has suffered. The agency is one more entity that has failed this child.”
Our Kids, the organization that oversees foster care and adoption services in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties under contract with the Department of Children & Families, declined to discuss the 17-year-old, whose case was being managed by the Family Resource Center, an Our Kids subcontractor. The Family Resource Center’s director, Oren Wunderman, at first agreed to discuss the girl, but, later, inquiries were referred to a Miami law firm, which also declined to comment.
“The alleged abuse this child suffered, at the hands of the employee of the Family Resource Center of Miami, is outrageous,” a spokeswoman for DCF said.
“Upon learning this information, the department immediately contacted law enforcement. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to ensure they have what they need during their active investigation, in order to bring a just resolution to the issue.”
The girl, who is not being named by the Miami Herald to protect her privacy, first came to the attention of the Department of Children & Families in the winter of 2013. Court records say she was abandoned by her parents, struggled with mental health, and had been forced into prostitution by human traffickers — the term child welfare and other authorities use for pimps who prey upon children or vulnerable adults.
For about a year, the girl lived on the streets as a runaway. Currently there are about 226 such children in Florida — 62 of them from Miami-Dade or Monroe — who have fled their foster or group homes. Last March, records say, the girl returned to court from the streets and “begged” Sampedro-Iglesia to allow her to live with her mother, whose legal rights to the child had earlier been terminated.
“While with her biological mother, the child stopped running, was doing well and finally began to engage in services,” the judge wrote in her order.

But there was a small glitch, which led to a big mistake with colossal consequences: When the teen registered for school, she was told she had to first resolve an outstanding warrant with state juvenile justice authorities. And that required a trip to Palm Beach County.
The Department of Juvenile Justice took care of the first leg of the trip, records say. For the teen’s return to Key West, the privately run Family Resource Center sent a “transporter” to drive her.
What occurred during the eight-hour drive now is the subject of a criminal investigation by both the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI. The federal agency, a DCF report said, “would be filing charges” against the man.
The girl’s mother became concerned that something terrible had happened when she found “inappropriate sexually [explicit] text messages on her daughter’s phone [sent] by the ‘transporter,’” the judge wrote. In an interview with the State Attorney’s Office, the girl disclosed details of her encounter with the man.
The driver, the girl said, stopped at a Walmart along the way and bought Smirnoff Ice, a citrus-flavored malt drink, and cigarettes, which he shared with her. He “asked the victim how she would feel if he kissed her.”
After the two had sex, the driver dropped the teen off at home at 3 a.m.

“The Court finds that the actions of the agency are not only negligent, but border on reckless,” Sampedro-Iglesia wrote. “The agency is entrusted with caring for and protecting those most vulnerable to our society: the voiceless children. Clearly, the agency has failed to do this.”
For Sampedro-Iglesia, the incident itself was only part of the problem.
Though the four-county drive took place on May 1, administrators of the Family Resource Center, or FRC, did not disclose it to the judge until almost two weeks later — at a routine hearing. The judge has ordered child welfare authorities to report adverse incidents involving children under her jurisdiction “immediately.”
Sampedro-Iglesia said she suspected something was amiss when a number of “higher ups” from FRC and Our Kids, South Florida’s lead foster care agency, showed up for the hearing unexpectedly.
In her order, Sampedro-Iglesia called the event “criminal in nature.” Then, she blasted child welfare administrators, both for leaving a human trafficking victim alone with an unvetted young man and for failing to quickly disclose the results.
FRC did not help itself, the judge wrote, by suggesting that what an incident report called “sexual abuse” or “sexual battery” could have been prevented by better training. “It shocks the conscience of this Court that the incident report indicates ‘the issue in this case was not of negligence, but of one where additional training would have helped and guided process development,’” Sampedro-Iglesia wrote.
“It is insulting to this Court that the agency feels that any type of training would have educated a transporter that perhaps having sex with a child [who] was entrusted to him is inappropriate and criminal in nature,” Sampedro-Iglesia wrote.
“It is equally repugnant to this Court that the agency testified that, had it known ‘that the child was a victim of human trafficking, perhaps a male transporter would not have been the most appropriate person’’ for the several-hour drive. “The agency’s remarks make it sound as if the incident that occurred was actually the child’s fault and not the adult that the agency entrusted her to.”
Details of the 25-year-old driver’s background are unclear. The Herald was given his name by a source with knowledge of the investigation, but the name cannot be matched to a person in any available database. His name is not in court records reviewed by the newspaper. And FRC administrators did not quickly release the man’s employment records.

Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia

In her order, Sampedro-Iglesia said the agency’s “background check” on the man was confined to Miami — though he “had lived most of his life [in] Tampa” — and relied instead “on the fact that the ‘transporter’ was recommended [by] and related to one of FRC’s ‘good employees.’”
What is known about the man: He got his job driving kids partly upon the recommendation of another FRC employee, a case worker, to whom he is related, records say. The driver had been working for the foster care and adoption agency three days when he was assigned to transport the teen.
Said the DCF incident report, written by an employee of a Key West shelter that is working with the family: “Mother and myself do not understand how a 17-year-old girl with her background [redacted] was released to a single male transporter and why a female transporter was not accompanying her.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article25021960.html

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article25021960.html#storylink=cpy

Scott claim of fewer child abuse deaths questioned

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press; KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press

MIAMI — Republican Gov. Rick Scott repeatedly tells voters that abused and neglected children are safer under his leadership than when his Democratic opponent Charlie Crist was governor, but an Associated Press examination of that claim shows that campaign claim may be an exaggeration.

Scott says deaths among children who have come to the Department of Children and Families' attention have plummeted from 97 in 2009 to 36 last year, but child welfare experts say any drop is attributed to the way DCF responds to abuse reports and changes to what is considered a death caused by neglect or abuse. The result artificially reduces the number of child deaths compared to Crist's 2007-11 term.

 "It's amazing how this works, isn't it? You just change how you do things and you can make it appear ... like things have improved," said Pam Graham, who was on the state's child abuse death review team until December and who is a professor at Florida State University's College of Social Work.
Three times during a debate last Friday, Scott said 97 children with a DCF history died of abuse in 2009. But the state's Child Abuse Death Review Team, which is independent of DCF and often highly critical of the agency, says only 69 children fell into that category that year. Scott's staff said the 97 figure came from a private company hired by DCF and the Scott administration that examined child deaths between 2007 and 2013. The administration says the company's analysis is based on updated data.
After the debate, Scott's campaign issued a release saying child abuse deaths have declined dramatically since he took office in 2011. But the governor and his team omitted a crucial point: Child welfare officials no longer count children who drown or infants and toddlers who die because a sleeping parent rolls onto them, saying there had to be a caregiver's willful act for the death to be considered abuse or neglect. The new standard meant many deaths weren't counted, even when there was evidence that parental drug use contributed.

The result made it appear there were fewer deaths. The change came under Crist but has affected the numbers since Scott took office.
The effect was immediate and the number of verified child abuse and neglect deaths dropped 30 percent under Crist, from 197 to 136 between 2009 and 2010, according to a tally by the state Department of Health. In the three years since Scott took office, the figures dropped to 130, 129 and 112, according to state data. This includes verified abuse and neglect deaths where the family had no history with DCF.
Crist said Scott's use of the death figures to score political points is "unconscionable."
"These children aren't political pawns to be played with," Crist said in a telephone interview. "I don't think anybody would expect anyone in political office to utilize the fate of children under the care of an agency for political gain."
Scott spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said the governor "has laid out a clear plan to protect Florida's children and keep our reforms at DCF moving forward," including additional supervision and risk detection methods. Amid growing scrutiny of DCF this year, Scott and the Republican-led Legislature overhauled the child welfare system, dedicating roughly $18.5 million to hire nearly 200 new investigators.

But it's difficult to say whether children have been safer under the Scott or Crist administration. DCF has had a troubled history for decades.
Graham believes it's misleading to say children are safer under Scott's leadership.
"When you look at the overall number of kids that die, it really hasn't gone down that much," she said.
Graham said DCF is screening out a higher percentage of calls to the state child abuse hotline under Scott, which means both fewer investigations and fewer deaths ultimately categorized as abuse.
Advocates are angry that child abuse deaths are being politicized, especially since several gruesome child deaths made national headlines on Scott's watch including a recent tragedy in Bell, Florida. Don Spirit fatally shot his six grandchildren and his daughter before killing himself. Records show DCF had been called 18 times to investigate the family over several years, both under Scott and Crist.
George Sheldon, who was Crist's DCF secretary, said he and his predecessor decided that more cases should be sent to the child death review team, including drowning and co-sleeping deaths. This year the Legislature mandated that the review team examine all suspicious deaths.
"To not see the broader picture is in essence just hiding the real problem, which is we could do more. If you're going to spend your time saying there were fewer deaths, then you're ignoring the bigger problem. New deaths are occurring," Graham said.

Read more at http://www.wral.com/scott-claim-of-fewer-child-abuse-deaths-questioned/14079721/#V3sRtmEhKDQIkSTv.99

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.

Mom gets children; DCF gets skewered

By Carol Marbin Miller

cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

A young Miami mom was stripped of the right to raise her four children. The father of the youngest child was allowed to keep the girl.
Just another day in child-welfare court.
But then a child welfare judge in Miami discovered information that troubled him: A social worker who gave damaging testimony against the woman — while lavishing praise on the father — had had sex with the father, at least according to the man himself. Another case worker whose testimony also was damaging to the mother had told colleagues she wanted to adopt her children after the mother lost all rights to them.
Calling the actions of the two child welfare workers — as well as their bosses and lawyers — “reprehensible” and “manifestly unconscionable,” the judge returned the four children to their mother this week. In a 40-page order tinged with anger, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael A. Hanzman said the reversal was necessary in order to undo a miscarriage of justice.

Circuit Judge Michael A. Hanzman

Hanzman, who presides over child welfare cases in Miami’s Allapattah juvenile courthouse, wrote that the woman could not have received a fair trial because state child welfare “agents withheld information that demonstrated bias on the part of two material witnesses.”
The Department of Children & Families “and its cadre of private sector agents are a collective prosecutorial arm of the state, charged with a public trust,” Hanzman wrote in the order, signed Tuesday. “The constitutional rights of the families brought into our dependency courts depend upon the faithful and impartial exercise of that trust. When it is betrayed — as it was in this case — due process is denied.”The mother, Hanzman added, “was entitled to a fair trial. She instead received the ‘parental death penalty’ in a proceeding infected by bias and conflict…The parties prosecuting her knew the process was contaminated, but took no corrective action. The fact that the lives of this family would be permanently altered — and the mother’s constitutional rights severed — was of no moment. The state simply trampled on those constitutional rights in its zeal to win at all costs.”
Child welfare officials in Miami-Dade had some harsh words in return for the judge. They said he had just recently ignored warnings from them and left an infant in the care of a relative who accidentally smothered him.
The woman at the center of the controversy, and her children, are not being named by the Miami Herald to protect their privacy.
Neither of the caseworkers named in Hanzman’s order — “lead witness” Tatiana Ashley and Michelle Sales, both of the CHARLEE foster care program — remain with CHARLEE, said a spokeswoman for the Our Kids agency, which oversees private child welfare programs in Miami under contract with DCF. Ashley was fired for “performance” issues unrelated to Hanzman’s order, and Sales resigned, the spokeswoman said.
Neither woman could be reached by the Herald for comment.
DCF’s ethics watchdog cleared the two women of wrongdoing in a lengthy report last August.
The Inspector General was asked to investigate the mother’s claims in January by an Our Kids’ regional manager. The IG, Christopher T. Hirst, concluded the mother’s allegations regarding Ashley could not be substantiated without a witness to the alleged affair. Likewise, Hirst wrote that there was no proof that Sales lied on the witness stand, and that her desire to foster or adopt the children did not create a conflict of interest.
DCF’s interim secretary, Esther Jacobo, who was leading DCF’s Miami district when much of the controversy unfolded, said Friday her agency is most concerned with the future welfare of the mother’s children — not with what has already occurred.

Esther Jacobo

“The claims of unethical behavior by these caseworkers were thoroughly investigated by the DCF inspector general and not substantiated. Now, two years later, our attention must be centered on these children — their safety, security and emotional health. With all the information and facts in hand, my sincere hope is that the judge will do what is best for the safety and well-being of these children.”
Hanzman’s return of the four children occurs at a time of deep animosity between the judge and Miami child welfare administrators.
Earlier this week, a Miami infant born with medical concerns owing to his mother’s drug use died at the home of his adult half-sister in Broward. Hanzman, records show, sent the boy to live with his half-sister over the objections of DCF lawyers, an Our Kids foster care provider and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, which had conducted a study of the woman’s home and concluded she was not fit to care for the boy. Records suggest the half-sister may have accidentally smothered the infant while sleeping with him on a couch.
The mother at the center of Hanzman’s order this week emerged from a troubled home herself, sources told the Herald. Now 23, the woman “aged out” of foster care at age 19 with four small children, and sources say DCF continues to harbor serious concerns about her ability to raise the kids.
In July 2010, the agency’s hotline received a report that the mom and the youngest child’s father had an altercation. The children remained “safely” in the mother’s care, the judge wrote, until March 2011, when a relative complained that the father had pulled a gun on him.
When DCF was alerted to the incident by the mother, the agency placed all four children in foster care. Two months after that — and after the mom had mostly completed a laundry list of tasks designed to improve her parenting skills — the woman was arrested on a shoplifting charge. DCF abruptly reversed course, filing a petition to terminate the woman’s parental rights.
The mother, a petition said, had been “unable to gain the necessary insight required” to safely parent her children.
At trial in August 2011, Ashley, the case worker, testified that, while the mom had completed parenting, domestic violence and anger classes, and although she was “bonded” with her children, Ashley had “concerns as to her parenting,” the judge wrote.

Broken system

As to the youngest girl’s father, the one who had allegedly wielded a gun, Ashley was far more complimentary. She testified that he was always “appropriate” in his visits with the little girl, and that she had no concerns about his parenting skills. Ashley recommended that he retain rights to the now-4-year-old daughter.
Sales, the order said, worked with the mother and her kids from October 2010 through the following January. Sales dropped the case, she testified, because she became fearful of the mother following a fight she witnessed between the mother and another woman. The mother insists that no such incident occurred, the judge wrote.
At a hearing on the mother’s concerns over the fairness of her trial, and in comments to the inspector general, Ashley strongly denied having a sexual relationship with the father. The father himself acknowledged the affair. The caseworker had begun “flirting” with him “while the two were in her car discussing what he had to do to get his daughter back,” the man testified. “They eventually wound up in the back seat having intercourse,” Hanzman wrote.
And, although the inspector general wrote that there were no witnesses, the father’s brother testified that he was at his mother’s house when the father and Ashley were in a bedroom having sex.
The mother of the children arrived at the father’s house in August 2011 while he and Ashley were “fooling around” in a back bedroom, the father testified. The father’s brother alerted him that the mother was walking up the stairs to see him. She confronted the couple and hit the father with a mop stick, the judge’s order said.
The caseworker, the father testified, told him that neither she nor CHARLEE were eager to sever his rights to the youngest child. He said he failed to disclose the sexual relationship out of fear that it would interfere with his custody rights.
As to Sales, numerous people — including several employees of CHARLEE — testified that she wanted to adopt the children.
So concerned were CHARLEE administrators about Sales’ desire to adopt the kids that they asked an Our Kids boss if it made sense to transfer the case to another foster care agency “to avoid any kind of conflict of interest.” The administrator, Hanzman wrote, refused the transfer request. Another judge who was presiding over the case was never told about the alleged conflict.
That omission, Hanzman wrote, “can only be charitably characterized as blatant incompetency.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/08/3740811/mom-gets-children-dcf-gets-skewered.html#storylink=cpy

U.S. Sues Florida Over Disabled Children In Nursing Homes

MIAMI – The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Florida on Monday, accusing the state of unnecessarily keeping about 200 disabled children in nursing homes and cutting services that would allow them to receive care at home. Once they do get to the facility, federal officials said many stay for years, some literally grow up in a nursing home.

Federal investigators say they visited six nursing homes around the state and identified roughly 200 children who didn’t need to be there and could benefit from being care for at home or in the community. But instead, the children languish in facilities, sharing common areas with elderly patients and having few interactions with others, rarely leaving the nursing homes or going outside. Investigators noted the children are not exposed to social, educational and recreational activities that are critical to child development. Educational opportunities are limited to as little as 45 minutes a day, according to the lawsuit.
Investigators also said Florida is violating the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and is infringing on the children’s civil rights by segregating and isolating them. The average length of stay is three years,
The federal government threatened a lawsuit in September if the state failed to make changes to the system,

Health Care Administration Secretary Liz Dudek

but Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Liz Dudek first denied the allegations, then repeatedly stated the problems had been fixed. In the past, Dudek stressed the agency does not limit medically necessary home health services and that parent ultimately decide where to put their children in a nursing home.

State health officials and Attorney General Pam Bondi did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Parents have said they have are desperately fighting to get services to keep their children at home.
“(The state) pressures parents to place parents in institutionalized settings and then give them no way to get out,” said attorney Matthew Dietz, who filed a lawsuit two years ago against the state that mirrors the federal lawsuit.

Pam Bondi

He said the state has not addressed the issue, despite official claims.
The waiting list for services at home or in the community has jumped from 14,629 in 2005 to more than 21,000 in 2012, with more than half waiting longer than five years. Currently, state policy does not give priority on the waiting list to children in nursing homes, federal officials said.
At the same time, the state turned down nearly $40 million in federal funds for a program that transitions people from nursing homes back into the community. The state has also been paying community-based providers less, reducing payments by 15 percent last year because of legislative budget cuts. Yet the state implemented policies that expanded nursing home care by offering facilities a $500 enhanced daily rate for caring for children, which is more than double than what the state pays for adults, according to federal investigators.
EARLIER: The U.S. Justice Department is suing Florida, saying the state is unnecessarily keeping hundreds of disabled children in nursing homes.
According to the lawsuit filed Monday, federal officials visited six nursing homes around the state and identified roughly 200 children who didn’t need to be there and could receive care at home.
Federal officials concluded the state has made it difficult for disabled children to get medical services that would allow them to move home. According to the lawsuit, Florida’s system has led to unnecessary segregation and isolation of children, often for years.
The federal government threatened a lawsuit in September if the state failed to make changes to the system.
State health officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Check back at HeraldTribune.com for more on this developing story.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130722/WIRE/130729914/2416/NEWS?Title=UPDATE-U-S-sues-Florida-over-disabled-children-in-nursing-homes

Florida DCF Worker Accused Of Prostitution Ring

DCF Worker Accused In Prostitution Ring Returns To MIA To Face Charges

MIAMI (CBS4) – An investigator with the Department of Child and Families accused of sexual misconduct with a foster child returned to Miami after being arrested in New York.
Jean LaCroix, 46, landed at Miami International Airport just after 5 p.m. Thursday.

LaCroix 46, was reportedly in New York trying to flee to the Dominican Republic before he was turned around and returned to the U.S., according to CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald.
“ASAs (Assistant State Attorneys) Brenda Mezick & Court Keeley, MDPD Det. Jeanette Azcuy & ICE ASAC Tonya Marshall went to extraordinary lengths to bring this man into custody as he tried to flee the country,” said State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in a statement released earlier this month.  “But for those who work child exploitation & human trafficking cases, extraordinary efforts are just part of the everyday routine.”
Investigators learned LaCroix caught a flight out to the Dominican Republic on June 30. They then contact customs agents in the Dominican Republic to refuse LaCroix entry. They did, and LaCroix was immediately returned to New York, where he was taken into custody.
Prosecutors believe LaCroix ultimately was headed for Haiti, where he grew up, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
Four men accused of running the ring were arrested in June. CBS4 obtained a copy of a search warrant issued for Lacroix’s work-issued cell phone. The warrant allows police officers to access Lacroix’s call history, text messages and any other communication he may have had with the alleged victim using that phone.
The warrant was issued in May. It indicates a 17-year-old girl in foster care admitted to Miami-Dade Police that she engaged in consensual sexual intercourse on numerous occasions with her DCF case worker, Jean Lacroix.

It further stated the alleged victim said she called and sent text messages to Lacroix and that he would arrange to pick her up from school, take her to his residence, where they allegedly had consensual sex.
“He was an excellent man, an excellent man,” said Lacroix’s friend Jean Clayvil. “I don’t believe it.”
Clayvil says he tried calling Lacroix on his DCF cell phone a couple of weeks ago, but wasn’t able to speak with him until he saw him at their church.
“I said ‘I called you’, and he told me he doesn’t have this phone number no more. He told me the company doesn’t want him to use the phone anymore.” Clayvil said Lacroix didn’t offer an explanation as to why.
According to the search warrant, Lacroix’s case work involving the alleged victim began in September of 2011 and ended in October, but indicated the two stayed in touch on his personal cell phone after he was instructed not to by his supervisor.
Lacroix was placed on administrative leave in May. DCF Secretary David E. Wilkins has since released this statement:

Fix DCF David Wilkins

This alleged behavior is absolutely appalling and betrays the trust and confidence that all Floridians have in our Department’s employees. Mr. Lacroix’s actions in no way reflect the expectations we and all Floridians have for our investigators or any of our employees.
LaCroix has been charged with five counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor.
CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed to this report.

cbs4price | July 12, 2012 at 6:44 pm | Tags: DCF, Department of Children and Families, Dominican Republic, Foster children, Jean LaCroix, Miami, New York, Prostitution, Summer Knowles | Categories: Local, News, Syndicated Local | URL: http://wp.me/p14KRs-AVp

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/07/12/dcf-worker-accused-in-sexual-misconduct-returns-to-mia-to-face-charges/

DCF Lawsuit State Settles DCF Case For $14 Million

For 10 years, agents with Florida’s Department of Children and Families placed children with foster mother Nellie Johnson, despite multiple reports that she abused kids in her care.
Now, the agency has agreed to pay more than $14 million to the 20 children placed in Johnson’s home. She was convicted of child abuse and neglect in 2003 and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

The payouts will resolve a federal lawsuit filed against nine DCF case workers and investigators. It also disposes of a state case filed against DCF in Alachua Circuit Court. 


The federal suit brought on behalf of 20 children alleged the DCF workers violated the children’s civil rights by depriving them of their rights to life, liberty or property provided in the 14th Amendment’s due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.

By suing the DCF agents under a federal civil rights act, the plaintiffs did not have to endure a protracted claims bill procedure in the Legislature to collect damages above the Florida’s sovereign immunity caps of $100,000 per person and $200,000 per incident. State law protects governmental entities such as the DCF from paying the full amount of claims unless lawmakers approve an exemption.

Filing a federal civil rights claim sidesteps the sovereign immunity limits, but it requires a higher burden of proof. The lawsuit, filed by child advocate and Fort Lauderdale attorney Howard Talenfeld, outlines each instance that a case worker failed to act upon a tip or a report of abuse.

"This is one of the most egregious set of facts you’ve seen anywhere and obviously the state agreed," Talenfeld said. He applauded DCF and its secretary, Bob Butterworth, for not forcing the plaintiffs to go to trial to seek the money they needed for treatment.

Butterworth, a former Florida attorney general, Broward judge and law school dean at St. Thomas University, said the outcome demonstrates the department’s commitment to settling cases involving clear wrongdoing on the part of DCF and its agents.

"The state can’t have it both ways," Butterworth said, adding that Florida cannot prosecute the foster mother for abuse and simultaneously take the position in civil court that the children must prove they were abused. 

Butterworth DCF

Coral Gables attorney Sheridan Weissenborn, a partner at Papy Weissenborn Vraspir Paterno & Puga, who represented the state agents named in the federal lawsuit, did not return call for comment by deadline Thursday.

From 1991 to 2001, Johnson, a single mother, took in more than two dozen children, according to the federal lawsuit filed by Talenfeld. During that time, 17 reports of physical and emotional abuse were filed with DCF and 30 calls were received by the department’s hotline indicating that Johnson was abusing children in her care, the lawsuit alleged.
Despite the complaints and the need for the removal of some abused children from Johnson’s homes in the Gainesville area, DCF continued to place children with her.

The children said that Johnson would beat them with pipes, belts, shoes, sticks and paddles. She would also force them to eat until they vomited.

In 2001, state officials terminated Johnson’s parental rights and removed the 17 children who were then in her care.

In 2003, Johnson and one of her adult adoptive daughters were convicted of child abuse and neglect.

In 2005, Talenfeld sued on the children’s behalf in Broward Circuit Court. The case was removed to U.S. District Court in Miami. Ten of the children in the suit were older than 18 at the time the lawsuit was filed.

 The lawsuit alleged that DCF "utilized the Johnson home as an inexpensive means to warehouse special needs children in order to avoid providing necessary and appropriate foster care and adoption services to those children."

Talenfeld recounted one instance when a child risked bringing a paddle to school that Johnson used to beat her with so she could give it to a DCF agent. The agent returned the paddle to Johnson without acting on the child’s complaint.

"Obviously the whole system plain did not work," Butterworth said in an interview. He added the state should not have left the children in Johnson’s home.

"When Nellie Johnson receives 60 years in prison for abusing the children that she had placed with her, you know pretty well that you’re not going to win that case," Butterworth said.

 

He said DCF decided it was in the best interest of the state and the children to settle and not delay justice for the children who were guaranteed to win anyway.

"Butterworth’s position makes sense: Why should we waste state resources on defending indefensible claims when we could be getting treatment for these children?" Talenfeld said.



Howard Talenfeld 

http://www.judicialaccountability.org/articles/dcflawsuit.htm


By Jordana Mishory
Daily Business Review
September 28, 2007