DCF Lawsuit Settlements Cost Taxpayers Millions.

DCF incompetence costly to taxpayers
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Page
     February 10, 2008

ISSUE: DCF lawsuit settlements cost

taxpayers millions.

Florida's lead social services provider has long needed an overhaul, but
state officials have chosen band-aid solutions instead. Now taxpayers
are paying the price in lawsuit settlements costing the state millions
of dollars. Such expensive payouts couldn't have come at a worse time
for a state already strapped with a $1 billion budget shortfall.

The most recent case involves a Southwest Ranches foster parent accused
of molesting little girls placed in his home. There had been previous
sexual misconduct allegations against 79-year-old Thomas Ferrara dating
back to 1992, and yet DCF continued to place children in his house. As
many as 400 children were placed in the home from 1984 to 2000, the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

The public is right to question why DCF workers kept placing children in
his care despite allegations of abuse in 1992 and 1996. True, no charges
emerged from the allegations, and those investigations were dropped. But
red flags should have been going up.

Broward Sheriff's Office arrested Ferrara in 2001 after a 9-year-old
girl told police he had molested her over a two-year period. Ferrara
pleaded no contest to the charges, and later accepted a plea deal,
getting two years house arrest and 20 years probation. No prison time.

Taxpayers didn't get off as easy. The state will end up paying $2.26
million for Ferrara's misdoings, and the trust the agency kept in him,
the result of three suits involving two different girls.

In some ways, the payments are progress and in keeping with DCF
Secretary Bob Butterworth's vow to open up the secretive agency and
admit wrong-doing. But such cases are also an enormous expense that

taxpayers can ill afford.

The agency deserves its share of blame. But Floridians must also do a
little soul-searching, for DCF's woes wouldn't have gotten this
expensive if the state's leadership had not been so inattentive and
neglectful in addressing the agency's shortcomings.

BOTTOM LINE: It's the worst time for such an expense, but hopefully a
lesson learned.

An Inconvenient Truth about Child Protective Services, Foster care, and
the Child Protection "INDUSTRY"

Child Protective Services Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of CPS.

every parent should read the free handbook from
connecticut dcf watch...



Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

Perpetrators of Maltreatment

Physical Abuse CPS/Foster care 160, biological Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS/Foster care 112, biological Parents 13
Neglect CPS/Foster care 410, biological Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS/Foster care 14 biological Parents 12
Fatalities CPS/Foster care 6.4, biological Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.

AMERICA'S HIDDEN HOLOCAUST

Currently Child Protective Services violates more Constitutionally
guaranteed liberties & Civil rights on a daily basis then all other
agencies combined, Including the National Security agency/Central
intelligence agency wiretaping programs…

THE CORRUPT BUSINESS OF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES
BY: Nancy Schaefer Senator, 50th District of Georgia

http://www.senatornancyschaefer.com/articles.php?filter=6

This is Child Protection?
By Gregory A. Hession, J.D.

http://www.jbs.org/node/4632

Mercenary Motherhood: "Memoirs of a Babystealer."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-callahan16oct16,0,5019944.s...

FOSTER CARE IS A 80 PERCENT FAILURE:. A Brief Analysis of the Casey
Family Programs. Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study. By Richard Wexler

http://www.nccpr.org/reports/cfpanalysis.doc

HOW THE WAR AGAINST CHILD ABUSE BECAME A WAR AGAINST CHILDREN

http://www.nccpr.org/issues/1.html

Adoption Bonuses: The Money Behind the Madness
DSS and affiliates rewarded for breaking up families
By Nev Moore Massachusetts News

http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2000/5_May/mayds4.htm

A recent study has found that 12-18 months after leaving foster care:

30% of the nation’s homeless are former foster children.
27% of the males and 10% of the females had been incarcerated
33% were receiving public assistance
37% had not finished high school
2% receive a college degree
50% were unemployed

Children in foster care are three to six times more likely than children
not in care to have emotional, behavioral and developmental problems,
including conduct disorders, depression, difficulties in school and
impaired social relationships. Some experts estimate that about 30% of
the children in care have marked or severe emotional problems. Various
studies have indicated that children and young people in foster care
tend to have limited education and job skills, perform poorly in school
compared to children who are not in foster care, lag behind in their
education by at least one year, and have lower educational attainment
than the general population.


*Casey Family Programs National Center for Resource Family Support

80 percent of prison inmates have been through the foster care system.

The highest ranking federal official in charge of foster care, Wade Horn
of the Department of Health and Human Services, is a former child
psychologist who says the foster care system is a giant mess and should
just be blown up.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2017991

Four rigorous studies have found that at least 30 percent of America’s
foster children could be home right now if their parents had decent housing.

This study found thousands of children already in foster care who would
have done better had child protection agencies not taken them away in
the first place.

Front-page story in USA Today.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-02-foster-study_N.htm?csp...

The full study is available here.

http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/doyle_fosterlt_march07_aer.pdf

The bottom line? - Child Protective Services and the Foster Care system
for the most part turns out young adults that are nothing more than
walking wreckage...

CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CONSTITUTIONALLY
GUARANTEED LIBERTIES & CIVIL RIGHTS ON A DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER
AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAMS....

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...

BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EUtnanxlHSIJ:groups.google.com/group/alt.support.foster-parents/browse_thread/thread/186e9c76d62e4e1e+dcf+florida+lawsuit&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Florida can't track child welfare contractors

MIAMI (AP) — A decade ago, Florida began turning its child welfare program over to private contractors instead of state workers. Almost everyone involved feels that the change has been for the best, but that's all it is — a feeling.

 Despite spending a half billion dollars a year, the Department of Children and Families does not have a standardized system for evaluating in most areas its 20 child welfare contractors, making it impossible to prove that the 40,000 children in the system are being helped. Nor can the state show with confidence which contractors are performing well, adequately or poorly.
"We've got to create better statewide data. We have very little," new DCF Secretary David Wilkins told The Associated Press. He plans to introduce a new system next year.
Critics and advocates agree that the child welfare system has improved overall and cite numbers that prove their point:
■ Adoptions jumped from 2,008 in the 2000-01 fiscal year when the state was in charge to 3,368 last fiscal year.
■ Child abuse deaths for those who had a history with the department have remained steady at about 70 a year since 2006, when the state's current criteria that included accidental drowning and suffocations where a sleeping adult rolled on top of a child were adopted.
■ The number of children in foster care has dropped 28 percent, from 42,325 in 2000-01 to 30,541 during the last fiscal year.
■ The cost per child in foster care during that period dropped 24 percent, from $9,978 to $7,602 during that period though DCF officials and the contractors caution that those figures don't account for tens of millions of dollars spent on prevention services. DCF says it doesn't have an exact total.
Longtime child court Judge Cindy Lederman was initially skeptical about privatization but said the system is a considerable improvement over the old DCF system. Before privatization, caseworkers frequently came to court unprepared, telling a judge they'd just been assigned the case and hadn't had time to read the file. That doesn't happen now, Lederman said.
"People were not fired. Contracts were not terminated. Five o'clock would come and you couldn't find anyone at DCF. Those things don't exist anymore. They take personal responsibility for every child...it's not a bureaucracy," she said of the contractors.
But others child advocates are more circumspect in their praise. Attorney Andrea Moore says many foster children still don't go to the doctor even though they have Medicaid and some aren't enrolled in school.
"Is it better now than it was under DCF? Yes, but twice as much money is also going into the system," Moore said. "The well-being of children is still far behind where it should be given the amount of money being provided to the (contractors) and their claims of how well they're doing."
Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, was an early supporter of privatization and still backs it but says the providers have become too powerful and agrees there needs to be a way to better measure their success.
"These privatized models have grown up to be nothing more than little governments all over the state that have no accountability," Storms said. "And now it works to the children's detriment and certainly to the taxpayers' detriment."

DCF's partnership with the private contractors has been rocky at times. Publicly the two never disparage each other, but privately there's constant finger-pointing when a child's death makes headlines, including a yearlong fight over insurance premiums and who should be financially responsible when a child is harmed.
In the case of a 10-year old Miami girl found dead in the back of her adoptive father's truck on Valentine's Day, DCF officials released thousands of documents detailing their blunders but privately fumed that the contractor that oversaw the case, Our Kids, was ducking responsibility. Our Kids officials hinted DCF was trying to blame them for problems they didn't cause.
"Nobody wants to take responsibility when a child is hurt. Everybody just points fingers at everybody else and they put Band-Aids on problems rather than really fix things," Moore said.
DCF and lawmakers sheltered providers when they were first starting out. Now the providers have grown into multimillion dollar agencies with influential board members and powerful political connections.
As DCF has tried to increase oversight, the providers have pushed back using their political clout, Storms said.
Provider contracts were written in the infancy of privatization and lack immediate consequences, including financial penalties or probationary periods for failure to comply. For example, providers still refuse to use the agency's multimillion dollar computer system.
Yet DCF has little recourse other than to terminate contracts. Only a handful of providers have lost them in the past decade
"There is not a lot of teeth in those contracts," Wilkins said. He's warned providers new contracts will include more stringent accountability measures and consequences. "There is a new sheriff in town. They are subcontractors to DCF so they have an obligation to report to me and do the things we ask them to do."
The most comprehensive current measurements compares each private contractor against 15 federal performance standards, including abuse rates while kids are in foster care, how long they're in care, and whether they're placed in a stable home or bounced between foster homes. But providers say the measurements are misleading and don't capture the quality of their work.
Our Kids, which cares for 3,500 children in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, said the standards don't consider improvements that have been made since a provider took over a region. The nonprofit group gets $74 million a year with much of that going to prevention and keeping children with their families while monitoring them. That drives up the costs.

"We can go back to the old way of having large numbers of children in foster care so that the cost per child would look better. However, experts will tell you that we are better served as a community by keeping families together with the support services that they need," spokeswoman Kadie Black said. "We know that the quality of life for children in South Florida has never been higher."


http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/may/03/florida-cant-track-child-welfare-contractors/

Judge Allows Suit Against DCF, Others To Proceed For Naples Girl Abused In Foster Care

NAPLES — He had an alcohol problem, a drunken driving arrest, a juvenile rap sheet and was the target of a restraining order, so he was turned down twice after applying to be a foster father.
Yet when Jeff Allen Woodring of Golden Gate applied with his wife, Kathy, they were approved as foster parents for a sexually abused 13-year-old girl, who later claimed they drank alcohol and smoked marijuana together, and he molested and raped her.
He was arrested and sued.
The 2008 lawsuit by the woman, now 22, overcame a hurdle last month after a Collier judge denied a motion by Ruth Cooper Center to drop the complaint, which also targets the state Department of Children and Families, Family Preservation Services of Florida, David Lawrence Mental Health Center, and Children’s Network of Southwest Florida.
This month, Children’s Network filed a notice of a proposed confidential settlement, a routine move aimed at possibly recouping its legal fees.
As the civil case heads to trial, Woodring, who maintains his innocence, remains free on $75,000 bond and wears an ankle monitor pending his criminal trial in late September.
“It was totally inappropriate to place a sexually abused teenage girl alone with an older man in a small guest house,” said the woman’s attorney, Richard Filson of Sarasota, who will be there to support the Naples woman at Woodring’s criminal trial.
Filson is the attorney who won a $1.2 million award from DCF for 26-year-old Pierreisna Archille and her daughter, now 9.
Archille’s former foster father was her daughter’s father. Bonifacio “Bennie” Velazquez, 74, of Immokalee, was released from state prison in 2008 after serving 6½ years for molesting Archille’s baby sister and repeatedly raping Archille, who has the mental abilities of a first-grader.

 DCF, which oversees the subcontractors that provided

care for the foster daughter in the latest case, declined comment, but said abuse within foster homes is highly unusual.
“We’re exceedingly careful with these children,” DCF spokeswoman Erin Gillespie said Friday. “It’s very rare, but one case is too many where these children have already suffered.”
Gillespie cited an intensive questionnaire and interview process that enables DCF to weed out unsuitable foster parents. Applicants are asked about their childhoods, discipline theories, how they treated their children, how they were treated as children, and their sexual lives — what’s appropriate, normal and what’s abuse.
The Woodrings operated a special therapeutic home for abused children with behavioral needs that exceeded basic foster care.
“Those parents have to take extra training to be foster parents ... to deal with a child with more issues,” Gillespie said. “It’s extremely rare that we have an abuse or neglect report for a foster home.”
“The very last thing we would want for a child in a foster home is to be abused again because we know that these children have been abused or neglected and they are vulnerable,” she added. “That’s why the process is so thorough.”

The lawsuit says the girl and her two siblings were placed in the Woodring home in 2000, but the couple separated in 2003 and he moved into a small, adjacent guest house with the girl, then 16.

Quotable

“While living with the Woodrings, (she) had developed a substance-abuse problem,” says the lawsuit, amended last year to add DCF. “Jeff Woodring provided and consumed alcohol and marijuana with (her).”

“While living with the Woodrings, (she) had developed a substance-abuse problem,” says the lawsuit, amended last year to add DCF. “Jeff Woodring provided and consumed alcohol and marijuana with (her).”
The lawsuit says she was last sexually abused in January 2006, when Collier sheriff’s deputies were alerted by DCF and the home was shut down. Woodring was arrested four months later and faces life in prison if convicted.
The lawsuit alleges the girl suffered physical trauma, emotional anguish, shame, humiliation, insecurity, self-revulsion and damage to her self-esteem. She also suffered medical problems, including suicide attempts, that prompted medical bills.

The lawsuit seeks damages for battery, negligence and vicarious liability, contending DCF and its subcontractors are liable as employers of a foster parent because they placed the girl in a position to be molested by licensing and relicensing an unfit foster parent who twice was rejected due to disqualifying offenses.

Fast facts

The lawsuit contends the agencies had a duty to monitor, supervise and ensure her safety and that they knew or should have known of the abuse.

The lawsuit contends the agencies had a duty to monitor, supervise and ensure her safety and that they knew or should have known of the abuse.
At a May hearing before Collier Circuit Judge Cynthia Pivacek, Filson argued Woodring never should have been licensed.
“That ought to be enough,” Filson told the judge, citing Woodring’s alcohol abuse and domestic violence history.
But attorney Joel Roth of Miami, who represents Ruth Cooper Center, contended it shouldn’t be liable because Woodring was required to adhere to duties under their contract.
“The minute you are performing a sexual assault, you are no longer acting within the course of your employment,” Roth argued, citing a prior court ruling in which an insurer refused to cover a deputy who raped a woman he’d promised not to arrest if she agreed to have sex.

“Jeff Woodring is a foster parent,” Roth said. “He is not authorized under any circumstances to assault, molest or sexually abuse a foster child. He is not acting in furtherance of his employer’s intentions. There can be no liability.”


Filson, however, cited a different court ruling in which a trooper who stopped a girl walking home from elementary school told her she was a theft suspect, drove her to a remote area and molested her.
Filson contended that, like that trooper, Woodring was only able to sexually assault his foster daughter because he was employed as a foster father and raped her under the scope of his duties.
Under a motion to dismiss, a judge must take a plaintiff’s allegations as factually true, allowing a lawsuit to move to the next stage if there are no other defects. Pivacek denied Roth’s motions to dismiss the case.
The defendants can seek dismissal later by filing a motion for summary judgment, which means a judge rules there are no factual issues to be tried and that the lawsuit can be decided on certain facts without a trial.

© 2011 Naples Daily News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c03i30HaE4gJ:www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/jun/18/foster-care-dcf-abuse-Woodring-lawsuit-Ruth-Cooper/+suits+against+dcf+in+fl&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Florida Department Of Children And Families 2 More Outstanding Employees

2 DCF employees and third woman charged with stealing $20,000 from Palm Beach dementia patient

Alexis White

PALM BEACH — Two women employed by the state to protect a vulnerable elderly woman instead preyed on her, stealing about $20,000 from her bank accounts while she was hospitalized for dementia, police said Wednesday.
Both women were adult protective investigators with the Florida Department of Children and Families. One went so far as to wait in 85-year-old Jane Janssen's Cocoanut Row apartment and pose as Janssen if the banks called to verify transactions, according to arrest affidavits made public Wednesday.
After investigating, Palm Beach Police Detective Nicholas Caristo arrested Mindi Marie Berry, 33, her DCF supervisor, Greta Laverne Lambert, 41, and a third woman, an employee of an escort service who told police she was hired to cash stolen checks.
Police on Wednesday were getting a warrant to arrest a fourth woman in the alleged scheme, which came to light after Janssen's son, Christopher Janssen, complained last month. That woman wasn't affiliated with DCF, police said. Berry and Lambert were fired in November after DCF learned of the police investigation, an agency spokesman said.
Adult protective investigators are responsible for looking out for some of Palm Beach County's most vulnerable residents, grown men and women who, for reasons of illness or developmental disability, couldn't take care of themselves. Investigators typically handle complaints of abuse or neglect but also often probe claims of financial exploitation.
"That's exactly what we would be called out to investigate," DCF spokesman Mark Riordan said of the allegations against Berry and Lambert. "It makes the crimes that they've been accused of particularly heinous."
DCF officials last month began reviewing each case Berry and Lambert worked on, a process that nearly is complete, Riordan said.
Berry had been working for DCF for less than a year when she was assigned to Janssen, Riordan said. Police said Berry noticed checks and bank letters scattered around Janssen's apartment and stole them at Lambert's and others' urging.
Described in police records as the scheme's "mastermind," Lambert worked for DCF for several years and had risen to the rank of supervisor.
Berry was taken into custody in November, soon after Christopher Janssen's complaint. After a month-long investigation, Caristo arrested Lambert and Alexis White, 19.
The women face charges of organizing a scheme to defraud, grand theft from an elderly person, credit card fraud and identity theft. Their attorneys couldn't be reached for comment.
A fourth woman remained on the loose Wednesday, police said.

                                                                                                                                                           

Staff writer Eliot Kleinberg contributed to this story.                                                      
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/22-dcf-employees-and-third-woman-charged-with-155647.html?cxntcid=breaking_news 

 

                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                                              

This may sound like a crazy case of fiction, but I am afraid that this is happening to families all over the United States.
This occurred in PALM BEACH Florida  but if you look at other city's such as Jacksonville, Florida or Chattanooga ,Tennessee or even your home town you will find horror stories everywhere and not just one or two but hundreds. It is time to stand up to our state governments and tell them our children are not a commodity, parents have rights, and we as Americans have Constitutional Rights. Ignorance is no excuse.

Florida DCF Caseworker Susan Cunningham Drug User Holds The Lives Of Children In Her Hands

Central Florida DCF worker arrested on cocaine charges

February 28, 2011 

This story broke on the news last night and I had to write the name down and double check this morning to make sure it was really true. It was. This woman was responsible for making sure children were not abused in Foster Care. REALLY? A Drug Addict? No wonder we are losing children to murder in Foster Care- it is past time to change this system

And she was responsible for children in foster care - Really?

Posted: 6:37 AM
Last Updated: 1 minute ago
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A central Florida woman employed as an investigator for the Department of of Children and Families was arrested over the weekend after she was caught with 15 grams of cocaine in her possession, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
Susan Cunningham, 39, was seen buying drugs at a motel known for drug activity, deputies said.
She was subsequently pulled over and at first, she denied having any drugs. A K-9 unit was brought in and the drugs were found, according to wftv.com.
She was arrested and bonded out of jail on Sunday.
Cunningham’s primary role at DCF is visiting homes to make sure children aren’t being abused or neglected. She has been with DCF since 2005.
Her current investigations will be turned over to other agency workers.
In a statement to WFTV, DCF Director John Cooper said Cunningham’s termination papers are already being drawn up.
http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/state/central-florida-dcf-worker-arrested-on-cocaine-charges


This may sound like a crazy case of fiction, but I am afraid that this is happening to families all over the United States.
This occurred in ORANGE COUNTY, Florida  but if you look at other city's such as Miami, Florida or Nashville,Tennessee or even your home town you will find horror stories everywhere and not just one or two but hundreds. It is time to stand up to our state governments and tell them our children are not a commodity, parents have rights, and we as Americans have Constitutional Rights. Ignorance is no excuse.

Media Blitz to 20/20 and Mark Levin

 You have the honor of standing up for those that can not stand up, be their voice, even if you have had no issue with the courts or Social Services, you have a moral obligation to protect the innocent, as well as the right to stand up for your Constitutional Rights.

You are invited to join together with us to send a blitz of stories, comments, and links to this weeks targeted choices.

This week our information will be going to 20/20 and Mark Levin: a Constitutional Attorney, who wrote the book "Men in Black" about the corruption behind the bench. He has a syndicated talk show

We do not have to like the particular organization that is targeted and we vary every week, we are not making friends with them we want to peak their journalist interest and hopefully touch their hearts. Remember to keep your story or comments relevant, concise, on point, no inflammatory statements or language. We want to be taken seriously. I am not saying not to put your heart into it, but remember that they are looking for a story for ratings.

Be a voice for those that have none, fight for your Constitutional Rights because if you don't no one will.

Email: marklevin.show@cumulus.com

 

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123566&page=1

Or see more on face book


http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=229581430430463

Best Interest Of the Child Or Their Wallets, You Decide

South Florida children's councils: They help kids, pay their officials big salaries

May 21, 2011|By Sally Kestin, Sun Sentinel

Property owners in South Florida are taxed millions of dollars each year to pay for programs to help children, but a chunk of that is spent not on kids, but on the bureaucracies created to aid them.
The Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County pays more than $1.3 million in salaries to its top 10 executives, with CEO Tana Ebbole making $220,000.

Salaries at the children's council in Broward are more modest — the CEO makes $142,000 — but employees are eligible for bonuses that so far this year have totaled $64,000.
In both counties, money that voters approved for children's services went toward construction of sprawling headquarters — a $17 million complex in Boynton Beach for the Palm Beach County council, and in Broward, an $8.4 million building in Lauderhill.
Some state lawmakers at this spring's legislative session criticized salaries and bonuses at child welfare agencies, and said they also were concerned about administrative spending at the children's services councils.

"People are making money off children,'' state Sen. Ronda Storms, a Valrico Republican and chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs, told the Sun Sentinel. "They take these teddy bears and hold them up and say they're doing it for the children.''
Council representatives say the criticism is unwarranted. Administrative costs represent less than 10 percent of the total budget of $62 million in Broward and $112 million in Palm Beach County.
"I don't like paying taxes any more than the next guy,'' said Rod Macon, a retired FPL executive who is chairman of the council in Palm Beach County. "We work really hard to keep overhead down, to be as efficient as we can for the taxpayer.''
Eight counties in Florida have established children's councils with taxing authority to raise money for kids. The amount they collect is just a small portion of the average property owner's bill — $70 on a $200,000 homestead in Broward, and $113 in Palm Beach County — but adds up to millions.
The vast majority of the money goes toward paying for programs, such as preventing child abuse, improving the health of pregnant women and keeping delinquent kids out of trouble. But when it comes to other spending, some of it is far removed from kids, a Sun Sentinel review found.
The Palm Beach County council's budget this year includes $1 million for public affairs, $500,000 for consultants, $279,000 for travel and $154,000 for lobbyists.
Those expenses are necessary to get the council's message out, monitor the performance of agencies that receive its funds and lobby lawmakers in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., to "ensure that Palm Beach County's children don't get short-changed,'' Ebbole said.

The council has cut travel by about $70,000 and has "been consciously working to decrease those kinds of costs,'' she said.
Of all the children's councils in Florida, Palm Beach County's pays its employees the most.
Ebbole's salary is $44,000 more than the next highest paid CEO, Modesto Abety of the Children's Trust in Miami-Dade, and puts her among the top-earning public employees in Florida. In state government, only two people are paid more, and the governor's job comes with a salary of just $130,000.
On top of Ebbole's paycheck, she gets a 2008 Mazda CX-7 that the council leases, $22,000 a year in deferred compensation and $6,500 toward a long-term-care insurance policy.
Besides Ebbole, 15 other employees at Palm Beach County' children's council are paid more than $100,000 a year. In Broward, only the CEO makes six figures, records show.
"I don't know why our salaries are higher, but I can tell you that every penny we pay that lady [Ebbole] is well worth it,'' said Palm Beach Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez, vice chairman of the council. "We probably have one of the best children's services councils in the whole state, and it's due to her efforts.''
Ebbole came to the council in 1989, three years after voters agreed to create the taxing district, and became CEO in 1994. She said her many years on the job have driven her salary up.

"I think that the longevity in terms of being in the position for this long, for this many years, certainly contributes to that,'' she said.
In Broward, CEO Cindy Arenberg Seltzer has been at the helm since the council was approved by voters in 2000. Her $142,000 salary includes a $7,800 car allowance.
"My salary is what it is because I said: 'stop,' '' said Seltzer, who has a law degree and a master's in public administration. "I'm certainly worth more, but we're dealing with public dollars.''
The 55 employees of the Broward council were eligible this year for bonuses, called performance pay, of up to 5 percent. Seltzer got the most, $5,000, and 20 other employees have received bonuses of $1,600 and up, records show.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-05-21/news/fl-children-service-tax-district-20110521_1_councils-salaries-kids