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Parents and advocates for the developmentally disabled protest Gov. Rick Scott’s emergency cuts to their programs. Some pass out fake currency mocking the governor. Scores of parents of developmentally disabled children protested deep cuts that Gov. Rick Scott ordered last week to close a $174 million deficit a the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, the Miami Herald reported.
From families of children with developmental disabilities, to group homes, nurse and support coordinators, advocates and others, the protests of hundreds of Floridians facing sharp cuts in services rang out through the Florida Senate meeting hall.
“With all these cuts, what am I going to do?” one mother asked of the Senate Health & Human Services Appropriations Committee.
“The protesters weren’t just worried with the cuts. Some were angry,” the Herald wrote. “They chanted ‘no more cuts.’ They pointed out that the 15 percent across-the-board reimbursement rate cuts were far deeper for some – as much as 40 percent. Some people waved placards that called Scott a “crook” for heading a hospital company decades ago that was convicted of ripping off Medicare. Others passed out mock “State of Disability” dollar bills emblazoned with Rick Scott’s picture.”
Whether in Florida and the Department of Children and Families, or in any other state where government agencies are charged with protecting young lives, when child welfare workers investigate an abuse case, what will they face? A gun or hostile parent? A ferocious dog? A meth lab or criminal whose intentions are unknown?
Many child welfare workers do their jobs out of love and a mission to protect society’s most vulnerable citizens. Yet burn-out, low salary, and even fear of taking blame being arrested for missing clues that result in a child’s injury or death leave many wondering about careers with child welfare agencies.
A recent Associated Press article told the story of one New York worker. “Workers at child welfare agencies around the country tell similar stories of taxing, emotional and frustrating jobs that are low in pay and high in stress because of hostile families, tight budgets and overburdened court systems. Workers juggle several cases, make as little as $28,000 a year and usually burn out after a couple of years.”
Florida’s child and foster care advocates, guardians and attorneys who work to prevent abuse of the state’s most vulnerable citizens were concerned when Gov. Rick Scott’s budget included deep cuts to the Department of Children and Families. During a visit to the agency this week, he lauded its work. Advocates remain hopeful for future spending.
The Governor visited DCF employees on Valentine’s Day. touring the agency and discussing the “thankless job” they perform. This came a week after he proposed cuts many DCF programs.
According to WCTV, Scott spoke with employees – some of whose jobs may be targeted – under a handmade “Welcome Governor Scott” banner. He acknowledged the effort of the people and agency that work with broken homes, abused children, and other social ills — many times which are exacerbated by tough economic times.
“Almost every family in this country deals with some of the issues you deal with everyday,” Scott said, according to the news report. “There is almost nobody that is unscathed, whether it’s drug abuse, substance abuse, child abuse.”
That said, his mission of cutting state government down to a proper size to get spending under control and create private sector jobs remains, Scott warned. Read the entire story here.
The Florida Department of Children and Families found itself in the news this week. Stories included an investigation of foster child’s serious injuries, the DCF-ordered closure of an illegal day care linked to child sex acts, and concern over Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s proposed deep budget cuts to the agency created to protect the state’s most vulnerable citizens.
Gov. Rick Scott’s proposed budget lays off 1,849 Department of Children and Families employees and slices $278 million out of the agency that oversees homelessness and health care; substance abuse, domestic violence and mental health. Read a Tampa Tribune article here.
Meanwhile, DCF is investigating the fractured skull of an 11-month-old Fort Lauderdale foster child the same week as the agency ordered the closure of an illegal day care center where a vice president with the center faces two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation and showing obscene material to a minor.
According to the Associated press, Florida has received some $5.7 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for increasing the level of adoptions of children in foster care.
HHS stated this week that Florida was one of 39 states rewarded for boosting numbers of adoptions since 2007. The states use the incentive money to improve their child welfare programs, the AP reported.
The news report continued: The 12 months ending June 30 saw 3,368 foster children adopted in Florida. That was fewer than the two record years before it, but still more than before the state started an aggressive public awareness campaign three years ago. Read the entire story here.
When the number of U.S. children in foster care drops 20 percent over the past decade – and 8 percent in one year, the figures lead caregivers, administrators, advocates and children’s rights attorneys to cite positive changes in the foster care system.
From Florida to New York to California, foster care enrollment – and how long kids are spending in the system – is dropping, according to statistics from the U.S. Health and Human Services Administration’s annual Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System report.
“This is very good news. The statistics and results show how concerted, collaborative efforts by various organizations and caregivers can really make a difference in the lives of so many children,” said Howard Talenfeld, a child advocacy attorney and president of Florida’s Children First. The statewide organization fights for improvements in foster care and children’s issues.
At a time when tough economics call for fiscal belt-tightening across the state, Gov. Charlie Crist this year has shown tremendous resolve and vision.
This year, the Governor has recommended $77.5 million to support a variety of Florida Department of Children and Families initiatives designed to protect current foster children and those graduating out of care.
Attorneys, guardians, advocates and others who provide legal representation for these citizens laud the governor for his recommendations.
“We are grateful that Governor Charlie Crist places such a high priority on continuing DCF’s progress in increasing adoptions of children in foster care, keeping children and families together and safe from abuse, preventing domestic violence and homelessness, and providing treatment for mental illness and substance abuse,” noted DCF Secretary George H. Sheldon. (more…)
We at Florida Child Advocate.com congratulate Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon and former Secretary Robert Butterworth for initiating an effort that recognizes that every child, regardless of age or disability, is adoptable. This is a great start, but we have a long way to go.
We’re not alone in recognizing this effort. The Miami Herald reports that Florida leads the nation in finding permanent homes for abused and neglected children.
Washington has recognized the work of what has become a model program, too. Reporter Carol Marbin Miller writes that Florida child-welfare administrators have received nearly $10 million in federal aid for Florida’s adoption program.
“For the second year in a row, the Department of Children & Families has led the nation — by a wide margin — in the number of children successfully adopted from foster care,” Miller writes. “For their efforts, DCF will receive a hefty bonus that can be used to boost next year’s adoption program.” Read More…
The Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF) has made strides of late, both in recognizing the need for — and furthering its protections of — children in the state’s foster care program.
But it has much to do and still farther to go. In a story, DCF Report Rips Way Kids Get Meds by the Fort Myers News-Press, Stan Appelbaum, chairman of the Local Advocacy Council for mental health, said “I’m not a happy camper with the way medications are being used. The first thing that I’d take away from this review is that it’s not a perfect system.” The article also called medicating children in state care an “unregulated, haphazard process in which drugs are prescribed to help caregivers calm difficult children instead of treating them,” according to an initial state review.
As the Miami Herald recently reported: A panel found that “Florida’s mental health system for foster kids relies far too often on drugs, with little oversight, according to a draft report on the suicide of 7-year-old Gabriel Myers.” Read the full article here. (more…)
Florida’s Guardian ad Litem program emerged from this year’s Legislative budget process with fiscal cuts not as deep as originally feared.
The program’s funding will be reduced by $2.81 million. Proposed cuts were $7.6 million in the Florida House of Representatives, and $2.6 million in the Florida Senate.
In the Fiscal Year 2009-2010 Appropriations Act, the Florida Legislature will reduce the Guardian Ad Litem Program by $3.817 million, and then reinstate $1 million in non-recurring money. Therefore, if the Legislature does nothing for FY 2010-2011, the GAL will be cut by $1 million.
There were no simple or pleasant solutions. This was the toughest budgetary year many people have ever seen. Although advocates stepped in quickly to help negotiate a balanced approach to this tough budgetary call, many foster children will be left without Guardians.
But make no mistake: The cuts span the spectrum of child services. (more…)
- 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.
- 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.
