Save gas - or kids?

Save gas - or kids?
A Times Editorial Published September 16, 2005

Faced with saving fuel or saving children, the state Department of
Children and Families made a stunning choice. It told caseworkers to
visit foster children less often to conserve gas. Though Gov. Jeb Bush
reversed that policy on Thursday, a day after it was revealed by the
Miami Herald, a frightening question remains:

What are DCF's priorities?

This is an agency, along with its predecessors, that has been rocked
by scandals surrounding the deaths of children in its ultimate care.
It is an agency that was forced to admit, following the 2002
disappearance and murder of 5-year-old Miami foster child Rilya
Wilson, that it had not been routinely checking up on the girl and had
no idea where she had gone. It is an agency that was admonished by an
investigative task force that insisted on monthly visitation and wrote
that: "Their terrible performance would have been detected had DCF had
in place a system to assure that caseworkers in fact visit their
assigned children at least once every 30 days."

Yet this is the same agency where a director whose title includes the
words "family safety" issued a memo on Sept. 8 that relaxed the
visitation policy "to address the fuel and energy crisis created as a
result of Hurricane Katrina's impact on the state of Florida."

Bush, to his credit, moved quickly to restore the visitation policy.
But neither he nor the people who have fought to provide a dependable
safety net for the state's 50,000 foster children can be happy that it
took the Herald to expose the problem and the governor to correct it.
When the goals of energy conservation and child protection conflict,
the choice should never be in doubt.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/16/Op..._or_kids.shtml
Defend your civil liberties! Get information at http://www.aclu.org, become a member at http://www.aclu.org/join and get active at http://www.aclu.org/action.