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Archive for the ‘Foster Care’ Category
(Scroll beyond this introduction to read the latest blog post)
If you’re a child or an advocate for a child in the foster care system, Florida Child Advocate is here to help.
This site was created by the law firm of Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate, P.A., and nationally known Florida child advocate Howard Talenfeld to protect children and to address key issues facing those with foster care, physical abuse, child sexual abuse, social services, dependency, disability or personal injury and damages claims or lawsuits against the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), agencies and other child welfare providers. We believe that children belong with their own families. However, we also believe that when protective investigations by the Florida DCF and its agencies reveal that children are at high risk of neglect, child sex abuse or physical abuse by their parents, they must be placed with suitable relatives when they are available, and if not, some children must be placed in foster care. Critically, if children are going to be taken into foster care, they should be protected by the Florida Department of Children & Families and their community partners from the risk of physical and sexual abuse and returned home or placed in loving and nurturing adoptive families as quickly as possible. Topics also include the rights of foster Children to be safe from harm in care, their right to medical, psychological care, and disability benefits, their educational rights, and their rights on the road to independence.
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Chalk one up for the good guys. Based on an alert by Howard M. Talenfeld, a Fort Lauderdale children’s rights attorney and foster child advocate, federal authorities were able to help former Florida foster child Markus Min Ho Kim recover $409,662 embezzled by his former foster parents.
 Recovery gives Markus Kim reason to smile Kim had contacted Talenfeld in 2008 about the theft. Talenfeld then alerted federal authorities to the embezzlement by his adoptive parents, Radhames and Asia Oropeza of Davenport, Florida. They had stolen life insurance money that came from Kim’s mother, who was slain in 2000 by his father, leaving Kim an orphan. Kim’s father currently is serving a life sentence in New York.
U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, Robert E. O’Neill, said full recovery of a court-ordered victim restitution of such a large-scale fraud is rare, wrote the Ledger.
“The amount symbolized his slain mother’s hope for a better future and his adopted parents’ betrayal,” the paper wrote. Said Kim, now 25, “I don’t think I can put into words what it truly means to me.”
Read the entire story here.
In Florida and nationally, foster care was designed to provide a safe haven for society’s most vulnerable citizens – the abused, neglected and overlooked children. Yet, what happens when they “age out” — turning 18, independent and no longer wards of the state? As this article shows, in Washington state, as well as in Florida and nationwide, advocates, rights attorneys and guardians ad litem have worked tirelessly to help kids find independence once beyond the support of the foster care system.
In the article, “State’s foster care system discharges ill-equipped young adults; Despite program’s good intentions, teens are out on their own and unprepared,” The Spokane Review writes of a national issue: Kids who on their 18th birthday, some with behavioral health problems, are turned out of group or foster homes where they’d spent their lives in the state’s care. They are to start on their own — often unprepared.
“Recently cut off of the powerful psychotropic drugs that had been used to control his aggression, Tyler Dorsey ended up in the Spokane County Jail on a domestic violence charge six weeks after aging out of child welfare,” the publication wrote.
“A new state law might have protected Dorsey, who was turned away by numerous agencies because of his juvenile record of assault…[The law] entitles foster youth without a high school diploma or GED to remain in foster care until age 21 by opting into the federal Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.”
Read the entire story here.
Foster kids who “age out” or turn 18 and are forced to leave state care face a daunting future. Whether in Florida or elsewhere in the county, they often have faced emotional, physical or sexual abuse. Many lack emotional maturity needed for self-sufficiency. Rarely tasked with handling their own finances, they’re forced to do so soon after release from foster care. Never or rarely having lived on their own, their “independence” comes quickly — often faster than they’ve been prepared to handle. One study found that about 16% of kids aging out will end up homeless.
Various research reveals how unprepared foster kids are for their new-found independence. A groundbreaking 2010 report from the University of Chicago delved deeply into the effects of aging out on former foster care kids.
With the Florida Department of Children and Families and national-wide with state-run organizations charged with protecting foster kids and preparing them for their futures, many kids “fall through the cracks.”
Research shows how vulnerable they are once released from care — and how some organizations are helping with the transition. One report, from the National Alliance to End Homelessness in America 2011, found that that “one in six young adults who age out of foster care is likely to experience homelessness.”
Read this article on National Public Radio about kids aging out of foster care — and efforts to help them.
Florida’s child advocacy community is watching closely as the Florida Department of Children and Families institutes a new policy regarding drug testing of welfare recipients. Starting next month, Florida’s social service agency will refer every welfare applicant who fails a drug test to a child abuse hotline, reports the Tampa Tribune. While some state officials claim such results will be used to remove children from their parents, civil rights activists fear it will do just that.
“Beginning Friday, anyone applying to the state for temporary cash assistance must pass a drug test to receive benefits,” the paper reported. “Applicants must pay the test’s cost, which will be refunded for those who pass. That upfront expense could exceed $100, according to state documents, for those who need a medical review to confirm that the drug detected is one for which they have a legal prescription,” it reported.
Read the entire story here.
The investigations, questions, hearings and discussions lasted more than a year following the apparent suicide in a Florida foster home of Gabriel Myers, a 7-year-old boy on the care of Florida Department of Children and Families — and under the influence of a cocktail of psychotropic medications.
 But it wasn’t to be that easy. Florida child welfare administrators, who closed their case in 2010 after finding that none of Gabriel’s caregivers had abused or neglected him.
The agency soon reopened the case, backtracked, and according to reports in the Miami Herald, “verified allegations that Gabriel’s foster parents and their then-19-year-old son, who was baby-sitting that day, were responsible for Gabriel’s death — one of the most controversial in agency history.”
Discussions leading to the new outcome centered on a series of difficult questions that confronted the child welfare agency as it was seeking to redefine itself and promote a greater sense of family among foster children. Read the entire story here.
 Did you know that kids in foster can’t be “tagged” in Facebook photos, or have their pictures published in the newspaper – even for good things. It’s not fair and it’s not normal.
Florida’s Children First works every day to make things more fair for children in the state’s system of care. This year, with the youth in Florida Youth SHINE, we will again push for broader “normalcy” reforms.
Will you help us? (more…)
The news is good for disabled foster children hoping to find permanent homes through adoption. Advocates applaud a new Florida program that could enable adoption of hundreds of disabled kids.
A new program from the Florida Department of Children & Families and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities will earmark financial resources for care and services for foster kids with special needs. The hope is this will help encourage adoptive parents who might not be able to adopt and raise the children otherwise.
It’s a big issue. Some 638 Florida foster children had developmental disabilities, including cerebral palsy, mental retardation, autism and other issues. . Some 224 of the kids are on a waiting list for services.
To learn more, read a recent Miami Herald story on the issue.
Advocates, children’s rights attorneys and others aren’t the only people closely following the story of Martin Gill and his two foster children. The story has caught the attention of local and national media.
The experienced foster parent and his partner took the brothers several years ago when the boys had nowhere else to go and the Florida Department of Children and Families sought a home for them. Then, Gill hoped to adopt the boys.
One problem: Florida law says gay couples cannot adopt foster children.
A Florida state appeals court struck down the law last week. While the story is not yet final, it still has captured national attention. Read some of the coverage here, in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Slate Magazine.
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- Miami Herald – Miami, Florida – December 30, 2011 - Barahona Judge’s Efforts to Ferret Out Leaks Detailed Court records released to The Herald document a judge’s efforts to identify lawyers or child welfare administrators she suspected of leaking secret material to the newspaper.
- Miami Herald – Miami, Florida – December 17, 2011 - South Florida Charter Schools Admit Few Special Needs Children From South Dade to the northern reaches of Broward County, only a handful of students with profound disabilities make it into charter schools, according to a Miami Herald / State Impact Florida analysis of student enrollment data. The trend holds true across the state, where 87 percent of charter schools don’t serve any students with the most intense support needs.
- Associated Press – State College, Pennsylvania – December 16, 2011 - Penn. Deputy Attorney General Cites PSU 'Inaction' A graduate student waited a day after allegedly seeing a child being sexually assaulted on Penn State's campus before telling his supervisor, football coach Joe Paterno. Paterno waited another day before calling the university's athletic director, who looped in a school vice president. "I think it's a sad, sad, sad day, when you think about all of these victims, and you saw the inaction by a number of supposedly important, responsible adults. And there's a lot of inaction in this case," Marc Costanzo, a senior deputy attorney general, said after the preliminary hearing.
- USAToday – State College, Pennsylvania – December 13, 2011 - Penn State Coach Jerry Sandusky Waives Right to Hearing, Will Face Accusers Former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky waived his right to a preliminary hearing today, sending the case directly to trial at a later date.
- Palm Beach Post – Miami, Florida – December 9, 2011 - Barahona Records: Neighbor Says Jorge Barahona Was 'Super Paranoid' Jorge Barahona was given to paranoia and fears of conspiracies around him that he expressed to a neighbor, according to investigative materials released this week by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office, fears that may have led him to murder his adopted daughter and almost kill her brother, Victor.
- The Miami Herald – Miami, Florida – December 9, 2011 - Pleas by Nubia Barahona’s Family Went Unheeded — Until It Was Too Late Relatives of Nubia and Victor Barahona were convinced that the children were being abused by their adoptive father. But they couldn’t get anyone to listen. Nubia Barahona, 10, was found dead in the back of her adoptive father's pickup truck in Broward on Valentines Day.
- Associated Press – State College, Pennsylvania – December 8, 2011 - Ex-Penn State Coach Sandusky Jailed on New Child Sex Abuse Charges Based on 2 New Accusers Former Penn State University assistant coach Jerry Sandusky spent Wednesday night behind bars after new child sex abuse charges were filed against him based on the claims of two new accusers, including one who says he screamed in vain for help while Sandusky attacked him in a basement bedroom.
- Gainesville.com – Plant City, Florida – Mentally Disabled Man Forced to Stand on Ant Hill A 21-year-old worker at a group home was arrested, and the facility where he worked was later shut down after authorities said he forced a mentally disabled man to stand barefoot on fire ant hills as punishment for stealing money. Florida MENTOR's Ike Smith Group Home's license has been suspended. Florida MENTOR continues to operate other facilities throughout the state. The Department of Children and Families and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities are investigating.
- Orlando Sentinel – Orlando, Florida – December 3, 2011 - Orlando Mom Was Foster Parent to Hundreds of Kids Dorothy Pearl Johnson didn't have children of her own. However, as a foster parent for four decades, she mothered about 400 children. Johnson, 87, continued to nurture children until a few months ago, when her failing health forced her to stop. After battling leukemia, she died on Tuesday in the home on Trentonian Court where she had cared for hundreds of children as if they were her own.
- New York Times – New York – November 22, 2011 - Drugs Used for Psychotics Go to Youths in Foster Care Foster children are being prescribed cocktails of powerful antipsychosis drugs just as frequently as some of the most mentally disabled youngsters on Medicaid, a new study suggests.
- USAToday – State College, Pennsylvania – November 16, 2011 - Penn State Case Presses Others to Tighten Abuse Laws Lawmakers and university officials across the USA are moving quickly to tighten up rules on who must report sexual abuse on campus in the wake of the Penn State scandal.
Reuters – State College, Pennsylvania – November 13, 2011 - A Long History in Penn State Child Abuse Case It will not be so easy to wipe out the stain on Penn State's reputation from the alleged abuse and what critics see as a cover-up by university officials who were told that Sandusky was seen raping a young boy in a shower in 2002. The case has drawn comparisons to the child abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic Church, whose top officials are also accused of covering up child abuse over decades.
Forbes – State College, Pennsylvania – November 11, 2011 - Conrad Murray, Penn State and Why the Powerful Enable Evil After Dr. Conrad Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson, the blogosphere, rightly, called him an enabler in a long line of celebrity enablers. Allegations that Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky raped a pre-teen boy in the college shower seem less shocking than the nauseating cover-up that follows.
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