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Brutal Child Deaths, Task Force Investigations Nothing New to Florida Deparment of Children and Families

March 28th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Nubia Barahona, Kayla McKean, Bradley McGee, Corey Greer, Rilya Wilson, Lucas Ciambrone, Beaunca Jones, Nia Scott, Alexandria Champagne, Saydee Alvarado, Walkiria Batista and Jonathan Flam. For the Florida Department of Children and Families — and its predecessor organizations — these names represent children who were reported being injured, abused, tortured or in harm’s way, and who later ended up dead at their caregivers’, families or foster families’ hands. Such cases continue to raise red flags and alarms regarding claims of personal injury and wrongful death.

Most also were the subject of extensive “blue panel” reports that recommended extensive changes to the way the state and its private community based care providers rendered care. Yet, the deaths still came.

The reports number about two dozen compiled over the past 20 years “blasting Florida’s troubled child welfare system,” the Miami Herald reported. “Each resulted from a scandalous child death. Each found similar faults with the system and were soon followed by promises from leaders with the state’s Department of Children & Families to make Florida’s children safer. Fast forward to Nubia’s death this year, and the cycle continues.”

Read the entire story here.

Nubia Barahona’s Death Places Spotlight on Florida’s Largest Private Child Welfare Agency

March 25th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

The worries and worst fears of Florida’s guardians, advocates and attorneys concerned with the welfare of foster children and vulnerable citizens statewide under the care of private child welfare service providers are coming clear with the death of Miami adopted child, Nubia Barahona.

As the Miami Herald wrote today, “After the most scandalous child death in a decade, chinks are beginning to show in the armor of the state’s largest private provider of child welfare services, Our Kids.

“Miami-Dade’s 5-year-old privately run child welfare agency is paid $100 million each year to protect thousands of abused and neglected children. But in recent months, it has been forced to defend itself.”

“When the state of Florida said we were not doing well with our child abuse and child welfare efforts, there were people in the community who raised their hands and said, ‘We can do a better job’ — and by that they meant there will be fewer dead bodies, better outcomes for children,’’ Florida Sen. Rhonda Storms, chair of the Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee, told the Herald.

Read the entire story here.

Palm Beach County (Florida) Judge Agrees Barahona Move to Miami

March 23rd, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Adoption, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Jorge Barahona, the Miami, Florida, adoptive father who was found with 10-year-old Victor Barahona in critical condition and twin Nubia Barahona dead in Jorge’s pick-up truck — both victims of alleged abuse — will be moved to Miami, a Palm Beach County judge has ruled.

The news follows a panel’s findings that Florida Department of Children and Families case workers’ efforts in the Barahona case were shoddy and was the result of “fatal ineptitude.”

Judge Karen Miller earlier this week approved moving Jorge Barahona to Miami-Dade County, where he will face multiple criminal charges. Read the entire story here.

Editorial: Investment in Florida Child Welfare System Crucial

March 20th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

The Miami Herald today posted a compelling editorial regarding continued funding of the Florida Department of Children and Families — the state’s lead organization in the protection of vulnerable foster and adopted children. Said the Herald, DCF must get the funding and resources it needs.

“The new head of the Department of Children & Families is right: His agency and its partners were complicit in the tragic death of 10-year-Nubia Barahona. Secretary David Wilkins has pinned the blame not just on mistakes made by select employees, but on a systematic failure of Florida’s child welfare system.

“The question is, with $190 million in budget cuts looming, will Mr. Wilkins’ mea culpa make any difference to the abused, missing and vulnerable children who need help across the state?” Read the entire editorial here.

News-Press Editorial: Florida DCF Cuts Could Cost Kids’ Lives

March 18th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Low and inequitable pay, difficult hours and increasing demands on investigators. Managerial conflicts and allegations of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and a hostile workplace. The News-Press cites these conditions as having led more than half of child abuse investigators in Southwest Florida to leave what it called a “brutally difficult job” in the past year.

It’s under these circumstances that people wonder how deep budget cuts to the Department of Children and Families will affect employees –and the children and families they are there to protect.

From the News-Press editorial, “As the Legislature reins in state spending lawmakers must not make cuts that worsen the turnover among child abuse investigators in the state Department of Children and Families.

“That high turnover, at crisis level in Southwest Florida for the second time in recent years, directly endangers the lives of children who need state protection.” Read the entire editorial here.

Editorial: Gov. Scott Should Quash Plan to Cut Budget, Eliminate Positions at Florida DCF

March 17th, 2011   No Comments   Uncategorized

Editorial boards, guardians, attorneys and advocates are lining up against proposed cuts to the Florida Department of Children and Families budget. According to today’s editorial in the Florida Treasure Coast Newspaper, “Gov. Rick Scott just doesn’t get it.” Florida’s new Chief Executive called for slicing $172 million from DCF’s current $2.77 billion budget. That 1,849 positions.

The editors asked, “Has Scott familiarized himself with the details of the Nubia Barahona case? She’s the 10-year-old girl whose decomposed body was found last month in the back of her adoptive father’s pickup truck in West Palm Beach. Nubia’s twin brother, Victor Barahona, was found hours earlier. He was coated with toxic chemicals.”

The editorial board concluded, “No doubt the Department of Children and Families can — and will — learn to ‘work smarter’ in the wake of this egregious tragedy. But does Scott really think the agency can improve the state’s protective services for tens of thousands of Florida children by slashing the budget and cutting positions at the Department of Children and Families?”

Read the entire editorial here.

Call Made For Grand Jury Review of Florida Department of Children and Families Handling of Barahona Case

March 17th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF), Investigations

Apparently, the Florida Department of Children and Families’ blue ribbon panel wasn’t enough. Some now are calling for a grand jury investigation in the wake of the grisly death of Nubia Barahona and the critical injuries to her twin brother, Victor.

Past grand juries were able to identify failures and help correct the process. Wrote the Palm Beach Post, “Those grand jury reports a decade ago improved a system that never will be risk-free on its best day. And we don’t want the DCF now to shift away from keeping families together when possible and seeking out adoptive parents for foster children. But what happened to Nubia and Victor was so horrible that only an outside look can determine why these children were not protected.”

Read the entire editorial here.

‘The House is Horrific’: Records Detail Tragic Life of West Palm Beach Child

March 16th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Jermaine McNeil was no stranger to the Florida Department of Children and Families Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-962-2873). No fewer than 10 reports had been called in by the time the boy – who was found dead and stuffed in a suitcase earlier this month – was five years old. One called his roach-infested home “horrific.”

Now the boy, and his sister, Ju’tyra, 6, are dead, along with their mother. And as with the case of Nubia and Victor Barahona, the twins found dead and critically injured, respectively, in February, DCF finds itself having to answer questions from child care advocates and others interested in how the agency handles these cases.  Read the entire story here.

Florida Department of Children and Families Fires Workers, Plans Changes – But Will Children Be Safer?

March 15th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

The Florida Department of Children and Families this week fired several workers and reprimanded others involved with the Nubia and Victor Barahona abuse case. But guardians and child welfare advocates are left to wonder: Will the dismissals and scoldings be sufficient? Will anything short of a systemic overhaul at DCF result in meaningful change at the agency that was chided by a panel for its “model of fatal ineptitude.”

As the Miami Herald wrote, just a “month after 10-year-old Nubia Barahona was found dead in the bed of her adoptive father’s pickup truck, state child welfare administrators fired two workers connected with the case, including the investigator assigned to an abuse report four days before the girl’s body was located.”

DCF Secretary David Wilkins also proposed changes to the beleaguered agency. Among his suggestions: a new model for performance measurement at the Florida Abuse Hotline (1-800-962-2873), the addition of some 80 child protective investigators, and a re-examination of investigators’ role as part of Florida’s child welfare system. Read the entire story here.

As Florida Handles Child and Foster Care Woes, New York State-Run Homes Face Abuse and Impunity

March 13th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse

A New York Times investigative series has revealed that “nearly 40 years after New York emptied its scandal-ridden warehouses for the developmentally disabled, the far-flung network of small group homes that replaced them operates with scant oversight and few consequences for employees who abuse the vulnerable population.”

Florida is not the only state with issues related to providing care to foster, state-managed and other vulnerable citizens. The paper’s investigation discovered “widespread problems in the more than 2,000 state-run homes. In hundreds of cases reviewed by The Times, employees who sexually abused, beat or taunted residents were rarely fired, even after repeated offenses, and in many cases, were simply transferred to other group homes run by the state.”

Read the entire story here.

Florida’s Children First Offers Five Steps for ‘Thoughtful Reform’ to the Child Welfare System

March 12th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF), Reform

Yesterday we awakened to the news reports of the record breaking quake in Japan and the resulting tsunami in the Pacific Ocean. Our thoughts are with the survivors of these disasters and the overwhelming devastation left behind. But our work is focused on the tsunami of tragedy that has inundated Florida’s child welfare system.

Victor and Nubia in Miami, Jermaine and Ju’tyra in in Delray, Ronderique in Tampa and an unnamed 10-year-old boy in Charlotte County – 4 dead, 2 seriously injured, all discovered since January.

All Floridians should be outraged and saddened when they learn of the details of these cases. They are right to demand reform and accountability. FCF joins in that urgent cry – but we do so with the benefit of the knowledge and experience of our day to day work advocating for children in state care. We cannot let outrage result in bad public policy.

We therefore urge all policy makers – and the public at large to consider five principles as they undertake to debate and reform our child welfare system. If like what you read below, please read the complete position paper.

1. Changing the Structure of The Child Welfare System will not “Fix” It. Just as privatizing child welfare did not cure all ills, neither will returning to a state-run system. Children cannot wait for an entire system change for reform to happen.

(more…)

Florida Lawmakers Aren’t Buying DCF Answers, Call for More From Community Based Care Agencies

March 12th, 2011   No Comments   Abuse, Advocacy, Department of Children & Families (DCF)

Florida Senator Rhonda Storms was skeptical and blunt in her assessment of the Florida Department of Children and Families’ handing of recent high-profile cases, like that of Nubia and Victor Barahona, and its promises of change: “How will this be different? How many more investigations, how many more death reviews do we have to do?”

The question was posed to David Wilkins, the new head of DCF. But Storms wasn’t through. Tired of excuses, she wanted answers from DCF, and the agencies to which it pays more than $100 million to oversee child services.

Storms wanted nothing of his explanations. She wanted answers and more organizations to be held accountable. That includes Our Kids, the lead agency which is responsible for the overall system. Said one advocate, if Fran Allegra, the CEO, does not admit fault, improvement will not come. More children will slip through the cracks of this dysfunctional, unaccountable system and be harmed.

“How about we start looking at the CBCs (community-based care organizations)? They need to get their fannies up here and explain,” she demanded. “We are still having little broken bodies, and it’s not just because evil people will do evil things. It’s because people – competent, professional people who are paid to do their job – are not doing their jobs.”

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