Numbers are better; are children safer?

Numbers are better; are children safer?

OUR OPINION: REPORT CONCLUSIONS RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT DCF
What a surprise the private providers are more interested in the
numbers then in helping kids.


Have the Department of Children & Families and Miami-Dade's Children's
Trust been more effective at protecting vulnerable children, as the
agency claims? Or did DCF officials in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties
deliberately suppress the number of at-risk children to keep down
costs after the foster-care system is privatized? The answer probably
is a combination of both scenarios.

Children's safety

The questions arise in light of a new report from a consultant team
that studied the DCF case files of 55 randomly selected children. The
report stems from children advocates' concerns that, at a time when
the number of calls to DCF's abuse hot line here have increased by 20
percent, the number of children the agency actually brought to
juvenile court for services dropped by 25 percent. Adding context was
the June 15 turnover of the foster-care system to a private provider
who would receive funding based on the number of children in foster
care on that day. The lower the number of foster children on the 15th,
the less the state would have to pay.

Some of the report's conclusions bolster suspicions. Consultants Norma
Harris and Derrik Tollefson say that the agency has no way to measure
children's safety and seems more concerned with tracking employees'
compliance with procedures and policies than with case outcomes. A
draft of the report included comments from some child-abuse
investigators indicating that top administrators discouraged them from
taking at-risk children into state care ''even though they thought it
was necessary to protect children.'' The comments weren't in the final
report issued by the DCF.

What gives? For starters, Miami DCF district administrator Chuck Hood
has brought new thinking to the district. He told investigators to use
common sense along with formal indicators of when children are in
danger or neglected. Thus, some situations that previously would have
triggered automatic removal don't any more. Such cases can involve
financial hardship that requires aid rather than taking children away
from down-on-their-luck parents. Other cases benefit more from a range
of services and monitoring than putting children in foster care.

Still in peril

But the consultants noted that the district often failed to follow up
on decisions to leave a child at home. No services were offered, no
checking to determine if the families sought any help or, if they did,
whether it was working. Also troubling are the multiple calls to the
abuse hot line in several individual childrens' cases cited in the
draft -- but not in the final report. How many calls did it take to
ring DCF's alarm bell? How many children still are in peril as the
state shifts responsibility for them to a private agency? There's no
way of measuring, so it's a question whose eventual answer could be
disastrous -- and tragic.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18