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Panel Issues Scathing Report on Florida DCF, Our Kids in Adopted Girl’s Death, State Oversight

A task force empaneled to study the death of 10-year-old adopted child, Nubia Barahona, and the critical injuries to her twin brother, Victor, could not have been more direct in its assessment. They called the Florida Department of Children and Families’ oversight “a case of fatal ineptitude” and questioned the “quality of the services performed by Our Kids and its subcontractors. Our Kids of MiamiDade / Monroe receives about $100 million per year from DCF to perform contracted services.”

Nubia Barahona

Nubia Barahona

Guardians, advocates, attorneys and others in attendance heard a scathing assessment. From DCF to the investigators it employs, the panel cited “a litany of bumbling by state child welfare workers,” noted the Miami Herald, and a host of “missed red flags” — any one of which should have set off alarms among the agency and its people. Read the entire DCF Report here.

Even Pete Digre, a DCF deputy, in apologizing for the agency’s woeful efforts to protecting the Nubia, said, “Our sorrow is compounded by the realization that there were many missed red flags and many missed opportunities that might have created a better outcome. The performance of our staff and community partners is completely unacceptable. Nubia did not receive the care, and prompt and urgent attention that each of us would have given our own children. As such, we failed miserably.’’

That about sums it up. Read the entire article here.

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