What is FCA?

Child Advocacy Blog

Search

Archive for March, 2017

Fort Lauderdale Lawyer: Two Suicides In 60 Days Means Florida’s Foster Care Privatization Is A Failure

Pioneering South Florida child advocacy attorney Howard Talenfeld, who fights for the rights of children harmed, injured, physically and sexually abused, or who have died while under the watch of Florida’s child welfare system, recently spoke with WLRN to discuss the need to end Florida’s tragic, failed experiment with child welfare privatization.

“It’s the Department of Children and Families that gives the job to a contractor like Our Kids, and they contract out with case management agencies,” Talenfeld says. “We’re seeing kids that just aren’t in the right kinds of placements, don’t receive the right kinds of services. In her case, she wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the Internet…We’re trying to get at the truth. Until we know what the truth is, we couldn’t even begin to try to determine what’s appropriate.”

As Florida’s premier law firm exclusively dedicated to fighting for and protecting the rights of abused, disabled and injured children in personal injury and damages cases, our lawyers have earned their reputations nationally by earning precedent-setting verdicts and rulings, delivering multimillion dollar settlements and providing pro bono legal counsel that helps our clients on their paths to recovery.

Florida DCF Lawyer Warned in Case of Foster Child Suicide Aired on Facebook Live

Private attorneys who fight for the rights of at-risk and foster children are watching closely as a Miami judge overseeing a case related to a child’s January suicide that was streamed from her foster home on Facebook Live threatened a Florida Department of Children and Families lawyer to jail for reportedly misleading the judge.  The judge is exploring whether other children in the foster home may have witnessed Naika Venant, the 14-year-old emotionally troubled foster child as she hanged herself.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia, the judge overseeing the case, demanded Florida’s regional child welfare legal director to appear in her court in March.

(more…)