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Archive for the ‘Department of Children & Families (DCF)’ Category

Florida Child Advocates Offer Summer Safety Tips

May 29th, 2015   No Comments   Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

As the school year comes to a close, families throughout the state will be seeking programs to ensure their children are safe while the parents work. With many kids each year becoming the victims of child abuse by caregivers, sitters and employees of summer camps, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) is warning families to take precautions. Below are tips and reminders to help parents keep their children safe during the summer season.

The campaign explores three common areas: choosing a summer camp, finding a caregiver, and ensuring your child is safe around water.

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Serious Red Flags Missed in Death of Hollywood Boy: Florida Child Abuse Lawyer

May 3rd, 2015   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

South Florida child abuse attorney and child sexual abuse lawyer Howard Talenfeld was interviewed this week on CBS News regarding the case of 3-year-old Ahziya Osceola. The Seminole Indian boy was discovered abused and dead in his Hollywood home after his family had reported him missing. Now, charges have been filed against his father and stepmother – and questions have been raised about how child protective service providers CHildNet, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Children and Families failed to communicate with one another to ensure Ahziya was safe.

As was made clear in the reporting and Talenfeld’s interview, Ahziya’s case was well known by various organizations. But the sharing of information critical to ensuring his safety was “inconsistent and insufficient.”

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A Sad Refrain: Broward’s Privatized Child Abuse System Does Not Protect Abused Children

April 30th, 2015   No Comments   Abuse, Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

It’s becoming an all too common refrain in Florida. Gabriel Myers, Tamiya Audain, Antwone Hope and now Ahzia Osceola, each slipped through the cracks of Broward’s Child welfare system and died.

A child dies or suffers serious child abuse, sexual abuse or neglect at the hands of his parents, guardians or caregivers. Once the Department of Children and Families launches its investigation, it’s discovered that the child was known to be at risk by ChildNet, Broward child investigators, and many others, but little to nothing was done to protect the child.

This sad refrain has come true again in the case of 3-year-old Ahziya Osceola. Though abuse investigators with the Broward Sheriff’s Office saw the signs of repeated abuse – bumps, bruises, fingerprints, scratches and abrasions on little Ahziya’s body – they failed to act or even acknowledge the “a pattern of repeat injuries” outlined in a report released this week by the Department of Children and Families.

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South Florida Child Abuse Lawyer: Society Must Do Better Than Letting Children Suffer in Closet

April 20th, 2015   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Imagine living life locked in a closet, deprived of food, medical care, even the use of a bathroom. Now imagine being a child or young teen suffering such child abuse and neglect. This tale emerged as police in Palm Beach County arrested a couple who kept their two children, now ages 12 and 17, locked up in a closet. No matter how much attention child advocates and foster child abuse attorneys try to focus on the harm and horrors inflicted on our children, the abuse and neglect continue.

In this case, police say the children would be locked in the closet in their Riviera Beach home for days on end, and nobody would notice they were missing. One child eventually was able to escape and reach a friend.

Police have arrested Quincy Hazel Sr., and Sabrina Golden-Hazel, both 44, accusing them of depriving the children of medical care and food for years. They’re accused of neglect of a child causing great bodily harm and both were in the Palm Beach County Jail on $100,000 bail. Still, police are unsure if the couple were the children’s parents.

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In Florida and US, Child Welfare Privatization is a Failed National Experiment

February 26th, 2015   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Commentary, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Florida’s child welfare experiment in the privatization of child care and oversight has proven to be a failure. Children suffer sexual abuse, physical harm, and – as a Miami Herald expose revealed – death, even of those children known by the Florida Department of Children and Families to be at risk. As attorneys and lawyers for at-risk children in the child welfare system know, no data supports the cause of privatization. And Florida is not alone.

Talenfeld - Alexendria HillIn a sad tale of child abuse and capital murder similar to some of those we’ve witnessed in Florida, 2-year-old Alexandria Hill of Texas died in 2013 at the hands of a foster parent hired to care for her by a company hired, in turn, by the state to oversee her care. Read her story here.

The story, “The Brief Life and Private Death of Alexandria Hill,” reports that Alex was removed from her parents, in part, because the father admitted to smoking marijuana after he put her to bed in the evening. She was placed with a former crack addict and an out-of-work bus driver, the article claims, paid by a billion-dollar contractor just over $44 a day to be “mentors” to two foster children.

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Domestic Violence Must Join Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse as Red Flags in DCF Cases

February 11th, 2015   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Any child advocate or child abuse attorney who fights to protect children from child abuse or other harm knows the confluence of domestic violence, substance abuse and mental illness create a toxic cocktail that can place children in harm’s way. Little Phoebe Jonchuck, 5, reportedly was surrounded by all three. She no doubt knew the horrors. Problem is, those who are paid to protect children like Phoebe missed the signs.

Word that John Jonchuck, the father who allegedly threw his daughter off a bridge into Tampa Bay in January, reportedly had been cited for alleged domestic violence, battery and stalking raises yet another red flag in the case of Phoebe.

Sadly, though his history was known, it didn’t sound alarms among officials at the Florida Department of Children and Families or those who granted Jonchuck custody of his daughter. One child advocate called hers “a preventable death.”

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Department of Children Rapid Response Team Report Cites Faults in Jonchuck Case

February 10th, 2015   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

After reading news accounts of the report issued this week by the Department of Children and Families in the case of Phoebe Jonchuck, the 5-year-old girl killed when her father allegedly tossed her into Tampa Bay, Florida child abuse attorneys and lawyers who represent at-risk children believe ample blame and areas of improvement exist as lessons from this episode. From operators at the Florida Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-962-2873) to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department to DCF itself, the report highlights what went wrong – and where areas of improvement exist – so future cases like Phoebe’s don’t happen again.

Among the most important points, at least two calls to the state’s abuse hotline were not escalated for intervention. One came in December, the other on January 7, one day before Phoebe drowned in Tampa Bay.

The family was not recommended to receive intervention by family service advocates following a call in 2013 warning about abuse to Phoebe. When the Sheriff’s Office did intervene following a call, they reportedly failed to refer the family for intervention as well.

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Florida Department of Children & Families ‘Safety Plan’ Provides No Safety for Mohney Kids

October 23rd, 2014   No Comments   Abuse, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

In a case of child abuse and family violence so horrific that child welfare advocates and wrongful death attorneys have said obvious “red flags” should have been apparent to all, domestic violence attorneys and child protection counselors are left to wonder whether the Florida Department of Children & Families’ creation of a “Safety Plan” for the Mohney family was a fool’s errand.

Father David Mohney was reportedly “controlling and jealous.” Wife and mother Cynthia Mohney “stumbling drunk” and abusive of their three children, according to news reports and official DCF documents. The children were left in fear of their mother.

It was their father they should have feared.

This month, David Mohney shot his three children, killing two – ages 14 and 11 – and leaving a 9-year-old in a medically induced coma. Mohney also shot himself. Yet this latest case of horrific and lethal child abuse should have been no surprise to anyone.

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Analysis: Undercount of Child Deaths Leave More Kids At-Risk for Harm

October 19th, 2014   No Comments   Abuse, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Can how a child dies under the care or watch of the Florida Department of Children and Families help determine whether the death stemmed from physical abuse, neglect, wrongful death or other harm? Apparently, opinions are mixed – especially during election season.

To Florida Gov. Rick Scott, the number of deaths of children who were under the care of the DCF statewide are open to question.

More directly, “…except for abiding by a new state law that required DCF to create a website listing all child fatalities, Florida has continued to undercount the number of children it fails,” the Miami Herald wrote in an investigation of deaths of children under the DCF.

Come have called undercount “cooked.” Most just want a fair accounting in order to help future children.

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Noted Children’s Advocate Attorney Howard Talenfeld Starts New Firm Representing At-Risk, Foster Kids

October 16th, 2014   No Comments   Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF), News & Events

Howard Talenfeld, one of the nation’s preeminent children’s rights attorneys, has launched Talenfeld Law. The law firm will be the first in Florida to focus exclusively on protecting the rights of physically and sexually abused, medically fragile, foster and other at-risk children.

Talenfeld is known throughout the legal community and national media as having established the nation’s premier children’s rights practice. His work on behalf of at-risk individuals has earned multimillion dollar awards and resulted in sweeping judicial and legislative reforms.

“This practice will provide a loud and clear voice for children who cannot speak or themselves in the state and federal courts and state capitals – Florida’s most vulnerable abused, medically fragile and developmentally disabled children,” said Talenfeld, who will be joined at the firm by children’s rights attorneys Stacie J. Schmerling, Rayni A. Rabinovitz, and Nicole R. Coniglio. “The time is right to leave Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky ,Abate, & Webb, P.A. after 34 years as the firm became a nationally renown insurance regulatory, litigation and lobbying powerhouse with plans to expand.”

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Man Charged with Abuse Approved as Foster Parent by Florida Department of Children and Families

October 11th, 2014   No Comments   Abuse, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Florida’s foster child advocates and attorneys who represent foster children who have suffered personal injury, physical abuse and sex abuse, and wrongful death are left wondering again how a man known by the Florida Department of Children and Families who was granted a foster parent license ended up being charged with killing a child in his care.

In a twist on news reports of children dying while under the watch of DCF, newspaper reports this week claim that DCF and its private contractors may have failed to completely review the background of Michael Beer before granting him a foster care license. The Port St. Lucie, Florida, foster parent was charged this week with beating to death Trysten Adams, a 2-year-old foster boy in Beer’s care.

Twenty years ago, Beers failed to help another 2-year-old who had been severely abused, according to news reports. The Miami Herald  reports that Florida DCF approved Beers’ foster care license in 2013, even though it knew of the episode.

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Agency, Senator Team Up to Help Foster Care Young Adults In Need

October 7th, 2014   No Comments   Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF), News & Events

In a previous article on this website, entitled When is a Florida Foster Child Not a Foster Child?, we answered that question with a simple response: When the foster child is a young adult, is disabled and is in need of care. For foster abuse attorneys and lawyers who advocate for victims of neglect and oversight, the argument long has been that Florida’s disabled foster “children” aged 18 to 22 are not foster kids in the eyes of the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities.

Those children are caught in a catch-22. Officials at the Agency for Persons with Disabilities have believed the Department of Children and Families or Medicaid are responsible for paying for the extended care of disabled individuals in foster care. DCF and others felt ADP should be footing the bill.

With the issue getting nowhere, finally advocates and legislators stepped up.

Working together, ADP director Barbara Palmer and state Sen. Nancy Detert finally agreed fixed some legal language in a 2013 law. As a result, those Florida foster residents aged 18 to 22 who opt to stay in care will soon be able to do so. The bill will be picked up by the state.

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