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In a report issued this fall by the Children’s Advocacy Institute and First Star, Florida and six other states got an “F” for the legal representation and attorney services it provides to abused, neglected and foster children, notes a story in the December issue of Florida Trend.
“Very few of these children have lawyers, and yet their entire life is on the line,” says Howard Talenfeld, Chairman of the Florida Bar’s Legal Needs of Children Committee. Talenfeld is pushing for legislation to require that children in the state’s welfare system have an attorney. Read the Florida Child Advocate blog on Florida’s Failing Grade here.
The Florida Trend story helps highlight the plight of these children — and the Committee’s work on their behalf.
Florida is one of ten states that do not provide attorneys to children in foster care and the dependency system. They are the only party in a dependency case who are not represented and thousands do not have Guardians ad Litem.
Children are entitled to the same zealous advocacy adult clients expect of their lawyers. Yet, too often, children come to court powerless, with no one representing them at all. . . .
“If children are lucky enough to have lawyers, too often those lawyers are underpaid, inexperienced, and overwhelmed by huge caseloads. Judges are left to make life-altering decisions about a child without sufficient information to back up sound decisions.”
Those excerpts are plucked from the 2002 final report of The Florida Bar Commission on the Legal Needs of Children, a hardworking group of Florida judges and lawyers and experts on children’s issues chaired by 11th Circuit Judge Sandy Karlan. (more…)
“It seems to be a prerequisite for foster children to be on medication.”
These words were spoken by the adoptive father of two 12-year Florida girls. And the reality he spoke of just shouldn’t be the case.
As Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was barnstorming the state discussing Florida’s successes in fostering adoptions, Mirko Ceska was telling the governor about the continued prevalence of psychotropic drugs in the lives of foster kids and others in the state’s care. Read the Miami Herald article here.
Powerful psychotropic should not be used as “chemical restraints” for minor foster children. But such use is widespread instead of behavioral approaches designed to address the real losses in their lives. (more…)
The heads of five Florida state agencies formally agreed today to work together to ensure that children in state care — including foster children — receive an appropriate, high-quality and stable education.
Signing the Interagency Agreement to Coordinate Services for Children Served by the Florida Child Welfare System were the heads of the Department of Children and Families (DCF), the Department of Education (DOE), the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ), the Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD), and the Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI).
Signers say that the agreement will go a long way toward ensuring that foster children receive the coordinated services and the stability they need to succeed in school and beyond. (more…)
Plantation lawyers Howard Talenfeld & Jesse Diner hope to improve legal representation of kids in state care.
Jesse Diner, left, and Howard Talenfeld are working together to help Florida’s foster care and vulnerable children.
Two Broward lawyers are hoping to work toward a major change for kids who have been taken from troubled homes.
Howard Talenfeld and Jesse Diner, both of Plantation, say they want to make sure every child in state care has a voice when moving through the court system. Both have taken on lead roles in recent months with the Florida Bar Association and one of their main priorities will be to improve the legal representation of children in foster care.
“I realized the single greatest improvement we can make in the child welfare system is to give every child a voice when they are taken away from their parents,” said Talenfeld, a longtime foster care and child advocate attorney.
Tracey K. McPharlin, a partner in Fort Lauderdale law firm Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate P.A., and specialist in foster children, foster care abuse, and damage claims, was elected 2009-2010 Chair of the Florida Bar Public Interest Law Section (“PILS”) on June 26 at the Florida Bar’s 2009 Annual Meeting.
McPharlin had served a statewide capacity as PILS Chair-Elect for the past year, during which she worked closely with outgoing Chair Maria Elena Abate, also a partner at Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate. Together, the two worked to build the PILS membership base through added CLE programming and awareness efforts.
Both Abate and McPharlin, who works extensively on the firm’s cases involving foster children, foster care abuse, and damage claims, chaired the PILS Legal Needs of Children Committee in successive terms. (more…)
By Jennifer Anchors, Executive Director of Children’s Home Society of Florida, Mid-Florida Division.
Happy Birthday, America. This week, we gather to celebrate the independence of our country and the freedoms we enjoy.
Independence is a recurring theme throughout our lives, beginning with our very first steps. We celebrate our 18th birthdays amidst plans for high school graduation, college enrollment, military enlistment or employment. These and other important life choices are made with the support and guidance of loving families.
Not so for Suzi. At 18, she was escorted to the door of a foster care facility, suddenly homeless. Sadly, Suzi had “aged out” of the foster care system, a harsh reality facing foster youth who are not adopted before their 18th birthdays. The traumatized teens, victims of abuse, neglect or abandonment, are handed notebooks containing their important personal papers and sent into the world ill-equipped, frightened and vulnerable. Carli, also among about 800 youth who age out of Florida’s foster care system each year, says “It’s like becoming an instant adult – I felt so alone.” (more…)
Psychotropic medications used without appropriate consent of parents and guardians has hit near epidemic proportions in the Florida foster care and group home setting. The public first realized this with the suicide of Gabriel Myers, 7, and weeks later, with a wrongful death lawsuit filed following the overdose of Denis Martez, 12.
The situation needs improved oversight — and the practice must stop.
In the following letter to Jim DeBeaugrine, Director of the Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities, attorneys Howard Talenfeld and Maria Elena Abate, partners with the Fort Lauderdale law firm Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate, P.A., call for Mr. DeBeaugrine to survey all licensed group homes working with his Agency as a first step in curtailing such use.
June 4, 2009
Jim DeBeaugrine, Director
Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities
Tallahassee, FL 32399
Re: Death of Dennis Maltez–Investigation of Psychotropic Drug Use in Group Homes
Dear Director DeBeaugrine,
As attorneys for the estate of Denis Maltez, and long-time advocates for the rights of society’s most vulnerable citizens, we are very concerned about the role psychotropic drugs played in his death from serotonin syndrome. I know that you are quite familiar with this case as your agency took emergency action and suspended the license of Rainbow Ranches, in part because of the inappropriate use of such drugs. (more…)
Florida’s foster children have been both a source of both eye-opening revelation about how they’re cared for, as well as the recipients of legislation designed to help them in the future.
In some good news for foster kids, Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed into law bills designed to help grant them access to records for medical and educational needs. The Foster Folly News wrote that the legislation benefits children in foster care as well as young people leaving foster care. The move “provides children in foster care better access to their own personal records often needed for medical and educational purposes. Senate Bill 1128 ensures that disabled homeless children and children in foster care receive appropriate educational services.”
WEAR-TV reported that the bills can be credited, in part, to members of Florida Youth Shine, a statewide advocacy group that specializes in foster care and child welfare issues. “You’re great advocates, you truly are,” Crist said.
Recent news in Florida’s foster child and foster care landscape continued to center on the fall-out of the Department of Children and Families response to Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old child who committed suicide in his foster home. Reporters and government leaders are scrutinizing how Gabrielwas prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs, and how the DCF plans to deal with such cases in the future. Among the stories… (more…)
Department of Children and Families (DCF) Secretary George H. Sheldon today announced that the Department is establishing a workgroup to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the tragic death of 7-year-old Gabriel Myers. Gabriel died on April 16 when police indicated he apparently hanged himself in the shower of his foster parents’ Margate home.
At issue: The level of use of psychotropic and psycho-therapeutic medications among foster care children.
- 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.
In a report issued this fall by the Children’s Advocacy Institute and First Star, Florida and six other states got an “F” for the legal representation and attorney services it provides to abused, neglected and foster children, notes a story in the December issue of Florida Trend.
