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Failures persist in child welfa The system was transformed adecade ago, but not necessarily fixed......



 
 
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Old June 24th 07, 12:28 PM posted to alt.support.child-protective-services,alt.support.foster-parents,alt.dads-rights.unmoderated,alt.parenting.spanking
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Default Failures persist in child welfa The system was transformed adecade ago, but not necessarily fixed......

Failures persist in child welfare

The system was transformed a decade ago, but not necessarily fixed.

By MELANIE AVE
Published June 24, 2007

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/24/St...ist_in_c.shtml

It was supposed to be a new era.

Florida began handing over its child welfare duties to private agencies
a decade ago, vowing children would be safer.


The new system would end child abuse disasters that plagued the
government-run system for years, including the disappearance of
5-year-old Rilya Wilson of Miami and the death of 6-year-old Kayla
McKean in Central Florida.

But when a missing 2-year-old Florida foster child was found June 14 at
a Wisconsin house of horrors -- where a woman was buried in the back
yard and a scalded 11-year-old boy hid in a closet -- glaring fault
lines were exposed in the state's privatized child welfare system.

As numerous mistakes are revealed, the case of Courtney Alisa Clark is
proving to be yet another systemic failure, a troubling example of the
very problem that reform was supposed to fix.

Courtney is safe now. But what about the 585 other children missing from
Florida's foster care system, and the 47, 000 under the state's
supervision? Probing questions are being raised anew about the state's
ability to protect its most vulnerable charges.

"I think there are serious flaws, whether it's public or private," said
state Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, who chairs the Senate Committee on
Children, Families and Elder Affairs. "There is a bias toward
reunification of families at all costs... I believe that to be a problem.

"I think this case shows that."

In the complex business of child welfare, mistakes are bound to happen,
said Andrea Moore, director of the Coral Springs advocacy group
Florida's Children First. But, she said, "our system is so far from
perfect that it's embarrassing."

String of missteps

Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Bob Butterworth
vowed last week to find out what went wrong in the case of Courtney Clark.

Private care still works best, he said, but vital lessons must be learned.

"You can't run this type of agency out of Tallahassee," said
Butterworth, a former state attorney general facing his toughest case
since his appointment six months ago. "I think it should be at the local
level, but the state still has an obligation for oversight."

He called errors in the Courtney Clark case "inexcusable."

Among them:

* The state's first contact with Courtney's mother, Candice Farris,
came in February 2006 after she was arrested in Clearwater for identity
theft. Courtney was placed in foster care. A month later, after the
mother was released from jail, she gave birth to a second girl, Alize.
In April, the state returned Courtney to her mother, despite numerous
arrest warrants issued for the mother in Colorado and Kentucky.


* The girl's caseworker, in followup visits, noted bruises and cuts
on the girl and confirmed the mother took the girl out of state without
approval. Still, the girl and her sister remained with their mother.


* In July 2006, Farris was arrested in Seminole County and Courtney
again was placed in foster care, though her infant sister was not. The
agencies responsible for Courtney's safety -- the Seminole County
Sheriff's Office and DCF contractors, the Sarasota Family YMCA and
Directions for Mental Health in Clearwater -- placed Courtney with an
unlicensed foster mother, a friend of the girl's mother who lived in
Sorrento, northwest of Orlando.


* Directions and the YMCA failed to request supervision by the
agency closest to where Courtney was staying, Kids Central. Instead, the
case was being handled 130 miles away in Pinellas County.


* In September, authorities said the mother showed up at the
Sorrento home and took Courtney without approval. The mother says the
foster parents dropped the child off at her home in Sanford, saying they
could not afford her any longer. It took the girl's foster mother 10
days, and her caseworker four months, to report Courtney missing to
local police. DCF rules clearly state that missing foster children,
especially those under age 13, must be reported within 24 hours to
"local law enforcement."


* The caseworker asked out-of-state police to pick up the mother
during a scheduled court appearance in Grand Junction, Colo. But the
mother never showed at the hearing, in keeping with her record. The YMCA
said Colorado police failed to issue a report, leaving the girl's
caseworker unable to enter her information into the state's missing
children tracking system.


* When a caseworker finally entered the girl's disappearance into
the tracking system in December -- which was known by DCF, the YMCA and
Directions -- it was not until late January that the Lake County
Sheriff's Office was alerted to the disappearance. Courtney was found
five months later because of that report.



Asked how many agencies erred in Courtney's case, Storms replied:

"There's so many, let me count the ways. ... There are too many."

'People' failed girl

Last week, Butterworth held a news conference to acknowledge the heroes
of the case, two dogged investigators with the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement and the Lake County Sheriff's Office who, by locating
Courtney, helped uncover the other crimes.

"People failed," Butterworth said, "but the system worked."

Several investigators in Wisconsin and Florida have asked repeatedly
what went wrong with the state's child welfare system.

"I don't know what happened down there," said Lt. Mark Hahn of Portage, Wis.

Butterworth said he will release DCF's internal review of the case
Monday. A more thorough investigation by the DCF inspector general also
has begun.

On Friday, the St. Petersburg Times filed a court petition, joined by
DCF, to open all records in the case. The records are sealed by law, but
Butterworth said they should be opened so people can understand what
went wrong.

Wisconsin authorities have filed murder charges against the girl's
23-year-old mother, Farris, originally of Henderson, Ky., two other
adults and the dead woman's 15-year-old daughter. They also were charged
with child abuse of the dead woman's scalded 11-year-old boy.

Courtney and her two sisters, also found in the house, are now in the
custody of the Wisconsin child welfare system.

Moore, with the advocacy group, said she is tired of agencies in
Florida's layered child welfare system pointing the finger at one another.

"They don't need to fight over turf, over whose case it is," she said.
"These are children ... and our government needs to treat them with
respect and not pass responsibility back and forth."

Matter of coordination

The Legislature mandated the privatization to begin in 1997.

Gov. Jeb Bush took on the effort as a point of personal pride and the
statewide transition to private foster care in all 67 counties was
completed in 2005.

DCF now acts as a supervisor of child welfare and a pass-through agency
for funding to 20 private community agencies overseeing about 500
subcontracts for case management, direct care, foster care placement,
mental health and adoption.

A state audit last year showed the cost of the current child welfare
system rose 83 percent per child over six years. Statewide annual
funding per child grew from $9,800 in 1998 to $18,000 in 2005.

Perhaps more surprising, the audit found that children are suffering
abuse at a higher rate -- a problem that can occur when families are
reunited too quickly.

In 2005, 11 percent of children experienced a second round of abuse,
compared with 8 percent in 1998.

But the state keeps better track of missing foster children now, despite
the problems in Courtney's case. On any given day, 1.2 percent of the
state's foster kids are missing, with 90 percent of them being runaways.
Half are found within three days.

The Web-based tracking system the state created after the case of Rilya
Wilson, who was discovered missing in 2002, deserves much of the credit.

Also, the state now offers more foster homes, and the caseloads of
workers have been significantly reduced, although communication among
the various agencies now involved has been a challenge.

Lee Johnson, a former DCF official who now is executive vice president
of the Sarasota Family YMCA, does not see Courtney's case as an
indictment against privatized foster care.

Even under the government-only system, he said, coordination was
required. Various districts existed and required cross-county teamwork.

"You still had the same issues," he said.

But Directions for Mental Health president Tom Riggs said he believes
the numerous jurisdictions involved with Courtney Clark complicated the
hunt to find her, as did her mother's criminal activity and her
movements from state to state.

"One of the things we're trying to get from this is some strengthened
procedures," he said. "I'm just very glad the child turned up alive."

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. Melanie
Ave can be reached at or (727) 893-8813.

[Last modified June 24, 2007, 00:42:20]





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

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

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

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 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, 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.

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...
 




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