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Posted on Sat, May. 25, 2002
More money hasn't solved DCF's woes
Bush claims success at agency, but foes attack his leadership
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER AND PETER WALLSTEN
cmarbin@herald.com
As the disappearance of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson brings growing scrutiny of his administration's child welfare agency, Gov. Jeb Bush has embarked on an aggressive defense of his record that centers on one theme: He took a system that Democrats left in ''complete, complete disarray,'' doubled funding and put it on the right path.
But a careful review of department records suggests that the full story is far more complicated.
While the state's spending on children has nearly doubled, there has been a significant increase in the demands on the system since Bush and his agency chief, Secretary Kathleen Kearney, took control in 1999.
Since then, calls to Florida's child abuse hot line have more than doubled. The Department of Children & Families has also experienced a doubling in the number of children removed from homes during abuse investigations, and a sharp rise in the overall number of children in state custody, records obtained by The Herald show.
During Bush's tenure, the administration has not made many changes suggested by state and national child welfare experts and even Bush's own advisors, who pronounced the agency's South Florida system in ''crisis'' as Bush prepared to take office in 1999.
Richard Gelles, interim dean of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Work, says Florida will perennially be thwarted in its efforts to reform child welfare, because governors and lawmakers have refused to spend Florida taxpayers' money. Less than one-quarter of the state's child welfare budget comes from state general revenue. Three-fourths comes from federal funding.
In contrast, Illinois, for example, depends on federal money for only one-fourth of its budget. The problem with federal funding, Gelles said, is that it is limited, and comes with strings.
''If you choose to underfund child welfare, you reap what you sow,'' said Gelles, who has been studying Florida's system since 1978.
Bush made rehabilitating Florida's child welfare system a touchstone of his 1998 campaign. But now his leading opponents in his campaign for reelection, particularly Democratic front-runner Janet Reno, have been harshly critical of his leadership on the DCF.
The centerpiece of Bush's defense has been the near-doubling in the state money spent on child welfare programs.
''The Legislature has doubled the money and we've put it in the places where I think better things have happened to the kids in our custody,'' Bush said earlier this month.
DOUBLING OF BUDGET
In fact, Bush spokeswoman Katie Muñiz said that when Bush signs the 2002-2003 state budget into law later this summer, the DCF budget will have more than doubled since he took office.
The funding increases, she said, helped the state hire more abuse workers, lessen a severe backlog of cases and even increase adoptions.
''The irrefutable fact is that since Gov. Bush came into office there has been over a 100 percent increase in funding for child welfare services,'' she said in an e-mail to The Herald. ``Without this money, there would never have been a decrease in the 50,000-case backlog, a decrease in the amount of time children spend in foster care, an increase in the number of adoptions, or an increase in the number of caseworkers or investigators in the field.''
In Miami-Dade County alone, $7 million will be spent this fiscal year, more than twice the expenditure in fiscal 2000, the DCF said.
According to Amy Baker, the DCF's chief financial officer, spending per child in foster care increased from $4,803 in fiscal year 1996-97 to $6,716 in 2000-01.
However, DCF officials reported last week to Bush's blue-ribbon panel examining the agency's performance that the agency spends an average of $3,707 for every child in a wider group receiving DCF services, including foster care, care by nonrelatives, and help while they remain with their biological families.
Records also show:
• The number of calls to the state's child abuse and neglect hot line increased from 188,406 in fiscal 1997-1998 to 490,336 in 2000-2001 -- about 160 percent.
• The number of child protection investigations resulting from those calls increased from 122,115 to 195,091 during that same period.
• The number of children removed from their parents as a result of hot line calls nearly doubled to 16,950 from fiscal 1998-1999 to 1999-2000, according to a report the state submitted in May 2001 to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The report to the federal agency said the number of such children removed from their parents and then placed in licensed foster care during the course of an investigation also doubled during the period.
• The number of children placed in the department's care rose sharply, from about 16,000 to almost 21,000 currently.
The major reason for the DCF's greatly increased caseload, experts say, was the Thanksgiving 1998 death of 6-year-old Kayla McKean at the hands of her father, which heightened public awareness of the dangers of child abuse and boosted legislative efforts to better protect children.
While the Bush administration's new spending has helped the agency keep up with the increases, it has not made the more costly changes recommended by past task forces, children's advocates and the transition team that advised Bush as he took office.
HOW MONEY IS USED
Most of the added child welfare money has gone to beefing up investigative staff and the number of hot line workers. But the agency has not followed the advice of many experts who have urged a greater emphasis on programs aimed at preventing child abuse.
The experts say those prevention programs lead to fewer children needing foster care.
One of the programs touted almost universally is Healthy Families Florida, which targets the families of at-risk newborns for intensive services.
The DCF suggested in its May report that Florida was, indeed, implementing such prevention programs across the state.
In fact, Healthy Families' budget has not increased since 1999, when lawmakers expanded funding from $10 million to $22.2 million.
Though Healthy Families' administrators are evaluating the program, they have estimated in the past that only about one-third of the families that qualify are getting services. Of the state's 67 counties, 18 have no Healthy Families programs at all, and many -- including both Miami-Dade and Broward -- offer services only in a handful of ZIP Codes.
Besides Healthy Families, the agency has increased overall spending on prevention programs from $13.7 million to a little more than $25 million, according to DCF chief financial officer Baker.
Another program favored by public health and child welfare experts is called Neighbor to Family. The program, pioneered by Hull House in Chicago, pairs trained foster parents with biological parents in crisis.
Neighbor to Family has been implemented in only three sites in Florida: Broward County, Daytona Beach and tiny Bronson, near Gainesville.
Another widely regarded prevention program is giving subsidies to parents of at-risk children so they can afford child care. When children are away from the home for several hours a day and under supervision, they are less likely to wind up abused, experts say.
Indeed, the governor's own transition team suggested that Bush increase funding for child care subsidies.
But such programs have not been a priority. As a result, the waiting list for subsidized child care has grown to more than 40,000.
The agency has also not followed some recommendations on mental health care for troubled children.
CHILD MENTAL HEALTH
Three separate child welfare panels, including a 1995 Dade County grand jury report, urged the state to beef up mental health programs. Though the DCF says in its May report that efforts have been improved, records suggest little additional money has been spent.
In the past four years, for example, the amount of general revenue money spent on therapeutic services such as counseling for foster children did not change, remaining at $28.1 million, records show.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen says she has seen some progress in the state's ability to treat foster children who have severe emotional problems, but not nearly enough.
''Yes, services have expanded, and, yes, they are out there,'' she said. ``But there are long waiting lists, and there is not enough. For these children and families, time is of the essence.''
In Miami-Dade, one of region's best known private providers of foster care service has experienced shrinking budgets and repeated calls to cut back on unnecessary ''quality'' to make ends meet.
CHARLEE, which was one of the first agencies in the state to perform private foster care case management, was paid $20 per child per day in fiscal 1998-1999 under a ''supported foster care'' contract.
In fiscal 2000-2001, the department cut back the agency's rate to $15.66 per child, arguing that it cost less to provide care because the agency was working with 125 more children -- producing a better economy of scale. In fiscal 2001-2002, the rate increased again to $19.
To keep its doors open, CHARLEE had to raise $2.5 million privately from 1999 to the present.
Charles S. Mahan, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Public Health, called Rilya Wilson's disappearance ''a clarion call for immediate action.'' In a May 17 letter to the governor, he called for a special legislative session to ramp up the state's funding for child abuse prevention.
''This will have both immediate and long-term impact -- so Floridians can start to take some pride in how we treat all of our children,'' wrote Mahan, who has served on two gubernatorial task forces that studied child welfare.
© 2001 miami and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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The Miami Herald. Fri, May. 10, 2002
Governor's DCF figures don't tell whole story
BY PETER WALLSTEN AND LESLEY CLARK
pwallsten@herald.com
TALLAHASSEE - In the debate over the disappearance of Rilya Wilson, Gov. Jeb Bush has said repeatedly that Florida's vulnerable children are better off now that his administration has cut the workloads of the state's front-line protection workers.
Bush told reporters this week that the average number of children assigned to each worker is 21, down from ''hundreds'' before he took office.
But the governor made no distinction between foster-care workers, who supervise children like Rilya once they are in state custody, and the ''protective investigators,'' who examine the thousands of suspected abuse cases called into Florida's hot line each year.
Aides to the governor later explained that he was referring to foster-care workers only.
However, the state's 1,400 protective investigators have an average of 42 cases each, according to figures obtained by The Herald Thursday from the Department of Children & Families.
In Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, the average is 63. In Broward County, the average number of cases per investigator is 22. In the district that includes Indian River and Martin counties, the average reaches 85 cases.
The question of how many children each worker is responsible for is critical as legislators and the public seek answers on how the agency could have lost a child in its custody and whether workers are stretched too thin.
According to the DCF, the Child Welfare League of America recommends that protective investigators be assigned no more than 12 cases each to ensure that each case is given adequate attention.
The Washington, D.C.-based group is an association of more than 1,100 public and private nonprofit agencies that sets national goals for a range of child welfare issues.
Bush, who is running this year for reelection and promised in 1998 to fix the long-troubled child welfare agency, mentioned the workers' caseloads Wednesday as he emerged from a half-hour video conference call with beleaguered DCF officials.
Questioned about the agency's failure to find 5-year-old Rilya, the governor defended his administration's overall record on child protection.
''Here's some good news,'' Bush said. ``If you have caseloads in some cases over 100 people per caseworker, it's very hard for that person to do their jobs. Today, on average, it's 21.
`SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS'
``We've made significant progress in lessening the load for these caseworkers who have a very, very difficult job.''
Bush's number refers to the average caseload of about 2,700 employees who work with children in foster and adoption services, such as Deborah Muskelly, the former child welfare worker who was responsible for Rilya.
A spokeswoman for the governor said that Bush focused Wednesday on the workers responsible for children like Rilya, whose disappearance has plunged the department into the biggest crisis of his tenure.
Bush's spokeswoman, Katie Muniz, noted that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of abuse investigations since a 1999 law took effect requiring more people to report suspected abuse and neglect to the state.
Still, Muniz said, the number of investigations per worker is declining rapidly thanks to massive budget increases in child welfare programs under Bush.
In one year, she said, the average workload for investigators has dropped from 62 cases per employee to 42.
''Can we do better? Yes,'' Muniz said. ``But I would argue that this is a pretty significant decrease also. And the reason that this has not been the primary topic of conversation in recent days is that this sort of [employee] has nothing to do with the Rilya Wilson case.''
Both caseload numbers are developed by the DCF using formulas that include the factor the agency suffers from chronic turnover in key protection jobs -- as high as 30 percent this year -- which results in constant vacancies.
While the agency states in reports to state auditors and national child welfare advocates that its workers' caseloads are as low as 12 children per investigator, that number reflects only new cases a worker handles, and does not include the backlog of older cases that can take years to resolve.
The DCF's chief financial officer, Amy Baker, said that the higher investigative caseload figures released Thursday do reflect new cases plus the backlog.
She acknowledged that including the backlog creates ``a more balanced view.''
`INDICATOR'
The higher number for investigative workers is ''merely an indicator,'' Baker said. ``It's important to try to clear up confusion on why we're getting two sets of numbers.''
One frequent critic of the agency said Thursday the various ways of calculating caseloads can be misleading.
''They're trying to confuse the public, maybe because they think it looks better,'' said Karen Gievers, a Tallahassee attorney and former Democratic candidate for secretary of state who has sued the DCF on behalf of children.
She demanded that Bush present proof that protective services workers' caseloads truly average 21 children.
''They're covering up the reality of the load on the front line,'' Gievers said.
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