- Florida Times-Union / Jacksonville, FL – January 22, 2010 -
Jacksonville Foster Care Advocates Honored Nationally A 27-year-old man who spent his boyhood in Jacksonville's foster-care system and a child-abuse investigator who spent her career serving it have been nationally recognized for their dedication to making improvements to how it works. Former foster child Mike Dunlavy and foster parent and Florida Department of Children and Families child abuse investigator Joyce Andrews received Ruth Massinga Awards from the Casey Family Programs. Nancy Dreicer, DCF director for Northeast Florida, said the recognition is a "significant national recognition of the positive changes that we've made in foster care in Jacksonville."
- NewsJournal Online / Volusia County, FL, January 19, 2010 -
Locals, DCF Reach Out to Help Victims of Haiti Earthquake Local workers for the state Department of Children & Families are assisting in the Haiti earthquake relief effort, including receiving American citizens, many Haitian-Americans, who are arriving at Sanford and Orlando International airports from Haiti. Reggie Williams, DCF administrator in Daytona Beach, said staff members were at the airports Sunday and Monday. Workers are taking shifts, along with DCF staff from the Orlando area, to provide assistance to families, including mental health, temporary cash assistance and housing.
- Capital News Service / Tallahassee, FL, January 19, 2010 -
State Helps Haitian Orphans, Doesn’t Expect Refugees Florida is opening its ports to expatriates and orphans and is prepared to send refugees back to Haiti. More than 5,000 U.S. citizens caught in last Tuesday’s earthquake have returned to the States. “They haven’t slept in days. They are hungry, so the food banks have stepped up. The Red Cross is offering meals as they arrive,” said Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon.
- The Miami Herald / Miami, FL – January 18, 2010 -
Schools, Shelters Get Ready – Just in Case With the devastation in Haiti, South Florida is preparing once again to play a role assisting a troubled country. Though there is no sign of an exodus of Haitians heading to U.S. shores, governments and social service agencies are preparing for the possibility.
- The Miami Herald / Miami, FL – January 17, 2010 -
How a South Florida Foster Care Tragedy Led to Reform Florida child welfare administrators had seen children in their care get raped, tortured, strangled, starved. But never before Rilya Wilson had a foster child simply vanished. Social workers across the nation still study the case as a cautionary tale for what not to do in child protection. But if Rilya's name has become synonymous with scandal, children's advocates and Department of Children & Families leaders say, it also has become a touchstone of reform.
- E! Online – January 12, 20101 -
Tiger Woods has one person sticking up for him. A Florida lawmaker is demanding the state's Department of Children and Families investigate whether someone filed a false report alleging child abuse against the disgraced golfing great and his wife, Elin Nordegren, after news broke about his sex scandal.
- The Florida Times Union / Jacksonville, FL – January 12, 20101 -
Four Cheers: Foster Care Leaders One of the proudest achievements in Northeast Florida is the fact that this area leads the state in adoptions from foster care. The success in the Jacksonville area has been a major reason why Florida leads the nation in this statistic.
- News-Journal Online, Daytona Beach, FL / January 10, 2010 -
Child's Suicide Raises Medication Questions The April 2009 death of a South Florida 7-year-old foster child, Gabriel Myers -- who was prescribed several mind-altering drugs and hanged himself in his foster home -- sparked a statewide review in November that will result in new rules and legislation in the coming months for children under foster care. "We must do better for our children," said Alan Abramowitz, former local DCF administrator and state director of the DCF Family Safety Program Office. "Medication is not the cure-all."
- TC Palm / Treasure Coast, FL – January 5, 2010 -
Editorial: DCF Must Continue to Improve its Abuse Hotline Procedures
cap:In a troubling account, the Miami Herald reported that thousands of calls to Florida’s statewide abuse hotline were screened out and not referred for investigation. Among them were calls claiming kidnapping, rape, aggravated child abuse and medical neglect, some of them coming from schools, judges and day-care workers.
- WCTV-TV / Tallahassee, FL – January 4, 2010 -
Task Force to Stop Child on Child Sexual Abuse Child on child sexual abuse touches and troubles the lives of thousands of children each year and the state of Florida is launching a new effort to stop it. The Florida Department of Children and Families identified more than 8300 children as either alleged perpetrators or victims of child on child abuse from 2008 to 2009.
- Associated Press / Miami, FL – December 3, 2009 -
DCF to Strengthen Response to Hotline Calls
Florida social service administrators will strengthen their response to calls for help to the state's abuse hot line after a newspaper reported that thousands of calls each month are being "screened out" and not forwarded for investigation.
The Florida Bar News / Tallahassee, FL – December 1, 2009 -
Panel Says Kids Have a Right to an Attorney Legal Needs of Children Committee supports legislation to provide children in dependency court with lawyer. “When the state takes a child out of their home and into state custody, it seems to me that every single child that is the main focus of such a process is entitled to a lawyer to represent their rights against the state,” Rosemary Barkett, U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals judge, told members of The Florida Bar Legal Needs of Children Committee. “A clear signal came through loud and clear that the overwhelming consensus of this committee is that children in a dependency courtroom need lawyers,” said Howard Talenfeld, chair of the Legal Needs of Children Committee, shortly after the conference call.
- The Miami Herald / Miami, FL – November 30, 2009 -
Cries For Help to DCF Hot Line Go Unheeded by Design Thousands of abuse reports to a DCF hot line go unheeded every month because of a new screening process intended to keep the strained system functioning. ``Hot-line calls are cries for help on behalf of a child,'' said Howard Talenfeld, the Fort Lauderdale-based chairman of Florida's Children First, an advocacy group. ``Any call that is screened out is a cry that falls on deaf ears
- The Ledger / Lakeland, FL – November 23, 2009 -
Dinner Gives Teens Leaving Foster Care Taste of Family On Monday about 100 teens gathered at the First Baptist Church of Bartow. Their differences are many and their life stories run the gamut. But the one thing they all share: They know what it's like to be lonely on Thanksgiving. They gathered to cook, eat, decorate and socialize as part of Devereux Florida Independent Living Transition Service's first Thanksgiving dinner for kids who have aged out of the foster care system..
- WCTV TV / Tallahassee, FL – November 19, 2009 -
Governor Crist Applauds Children's Home Society for Protecting Florida Youth Governor Charlie Crist applauded Florida’s successes in transforming state foster care while addressing child advocates, legislators and state child welfare system leaders from 18 states in Tampa. Florida was chosen as the host state because of its success in safely reducing the number of children in foster care, including the Governor’s statewide Explore Adoption initiative.
- The Associated Press / Tallahassee, FL – November 18, 2009 -
Governor Crist Applauds Children's Home Society for Protecting Florida Youth Florida's welfare agency should hire a chief medical officer to monitor powerful medications prescribed to foster children. That's the recommendation of a task force formed after a 7-year-old foster child hanged himself in April.
- The Sun-Sentinel / Fort Lauderdale, FL – October 21, 2009 -
Gov. Crist Orders Statewide Review of System That Allows Felons to Work in Child, Elder Care Gov. Charlie Crist ordered a statewide review of screening loopholes that allow felons to work as caregivers of Florida's children, elderly and disabled. The review follows a Sun Sentinel investigative series that found current laws and practices have let thousands of people with criminal records into jobs in day care centers and nursing homes. "When it comes to the safety and security of Florida's vulnerable populations, we must make every effort to ensure that their professional caregivers do not have criminal histories," Crist said in a statement.
- The Sun-Sentinel / Fort Lauderdale, FL – October 20, 2009 -
Report: Florida Ranks Third in U.S. for Rate of Child Deaths From Abuse, Neglect Florida ranks third in the nation in the rate of children killed by child abuse and negligence, according to a report released Tuesday by non-profit child advocacy and lobbying group Every Child Matters. The group determined that the 153 child deaths the state logged in 2007 amounted to a child death rate of 3.8 per every 100,000 children..
- The Huffington Post – October 8, 2009 -
What is the Cost of Privatizing the Care of Our Foster Children? A boy died in Siskiyou County this summer. Across the rural, sparsely populated county in far Northern California, people looked to blame someone, something for the two-year-old's death. Was it the fault of the woman taking caring of the toddler, the third foster parent in twice as many months? Was it the fault of Child Protective Services (CPS)? Or was it the fault of the private, non-profit foster care agency that the county had entrusted with the toddler's life?
- TC Palm / Martin County, FL – October 2, 2009 -
Editorial: Flawed System Puts State's Most Vulnerable at Potential Risk Some of Florida’s most vulnerable citizens have been placed at risk due to a flawed screening system that has allowed hundreds of felons to obtain work in day care centers, assisted living facilities and group homes. "We’ve got to do a much better job than what we’re currently doing,” said George Sheldon, secretary of the state Department of Children and Families, which, along with Agency for Health Care Administration, is responsible for granting exemptions for convicted felons seeking work as caregivers.
- Herald Tribune / Sarasota, FL – September 28, 2009 -
Holes in System Let Felons Care For The Most Vulnerable
Disturbing flaws in Florida’s background screening system have put children, seniors and the disabled in the care of convicted felons with records that include rape, child molestation and murder, an investigation by the Sun-Sentinel newspaper has found. Employees of day care centers, assisted living facilities and group homes are required to undergo a background check under state law but can begin work before their screening is complete, the paper is reporting this week.
- The Herald / Miami, FL – September 12, 2009 -
Guardian Ad Litem Gives a Voice to Abused Hundreds marched through Bayfront Park Saturday with cutouts representing the 850 children who enter the foster care system everyday in the United States The event was organized by the Voices for Children Foundation.
- Herald-Tribune / Sarasota, FL – September 3, 2009 -
Mentors Help Foster Children The always-expanding Next Step program has helped teenagers like Mercades Kennedy, 18, enter adulthood with its mentoring and tutoring services."It was wonderful," Kennedy says of the experience transitioning out of foster care. "I couldn't wait to get my own place and not have people over me trying to make decisions. Mentor groups consist of mental health, legal, financial, education or business professionals who are available as a support system for two years..
- The Orlando Sentinel / Orlando, FL – August 31, 2009 -
Doping Up Our Children The state's Department of Children and Families is under fire again, and rightly so. Recently, a task force issued its final report documenting how weak oversight and lax compliance with guidelines fostered a culture where officials often blindly doled out powerful drugs as chemical pacifiers to help caregivers manage difficult children..
- The News-Press / Fort Myers, FL – August 27, 2009 -
Reporter's Blog: How Do Foster Kids "Make It?" Lynne Roeschlaub, a former foster child from Lee County, doesn’t play the “pity card.” Study after study has shown foster children struggle with poverty and repeat the pattern of abuse and neglect after they leave care at age 18. How do some “make it?” A strong role model to guide them into adulthood and sheer will power seem to be key.
- Financial News & Daily Record / Jacksonville, FL – August 10, 2009 -
Guardian ad Litem Thanks Volunteers For Service
Providing children with a voice in court. The Fourth Judicial Circuit Florida Guardian ad Litem program said “Thank You” to volunteers who did just that over the last year with a reception at their office on the second floor of the Duval County Courthouse Annex Building on Bay Street recently. “We are so grateful for those who participate,” said Hilary Creary, supervising attorney for the local Guardian ad Litem program. “This is the least we could do.”
- Orlando Sentinel / Orlando, FL – August 7, 2009 -
Despite Austere Budget, Florida Adoptions Grow At age 17, Amber Holley knew that the odds of being adopted were grim. After 11 years in Florida's foster-care system, living mostly in group homes, she had started telling people she just wanted to be left alone — even if she didn't really mean it.
But three months ago, after being won over by a compassionate caseworker, Amber became one of a record 3,774 foster kids in the state to be adopted during the past fiscal year.
- The Miami Herald / Miami, FL – July 27, 2009 -
Florida to Give Foster Care Workers a $6.3M Upgrade A company giving cellphones and laptops to workers would not normally qualify as news. But this is actually a big deal for caseworkers working with the nonprofit agency Our Kids of Miami-Dade/Monroe, which contracts with the state to oversee foster care and related services for the area. This group was the first in Florida to provide an easy way for caseworkers to keep records of their children on a laptop and on smart phones.
