USA TODAY International Edition
‘ THE SYSTEM IS SO BROKEN’
Florida failed to keep foster kids safe, sending hundreds to known abusers
Six years ago, Florida lawmakers embraced a tough new approach to stop parents from abusing their children.
They approved millions to hire more child welfare investigators and rewrote rules to make it easier to seize children from their parents.
The plan, signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Scott, was widely embraced as a historic stand against child abuse, a critical rethinking of philosophy that had made regulators soft on abusers.
But there was a problem: No one had figured out where to put all the children.
In months, the foster care system found itself drowning in hundreds of new cases. By 2017, the state needed space for 6,000 additional foster children – an influx equivalent to the size of the entire foster population of the state of New Jersey.
Lawmakers, child welfare leaders and Scott did not hire more caseworkers or increase the money paid to foster families to make more homes. They failed to tackle the root problems driving most of the removals: lack of access
to drug treatment, mental health care and domestic violence services for parents.
Foster care agencies packed children into overcrowded homes and sent hundreds of boys and girls to foster parents accused of abusing or neglecting the children in their care, according to a USA TODAY investigation.
Using a state database to examine more than 1 million foster home placements going back a decade and crisscrossing the state to interview more than 100 survivors, parents and caseworkers, USA TODAY found:
h The Department of Children and Families and private agencies that manage the child welfare system across Florida sent nearly 170 children to live in foster homes where the state had evidence that abuse occurred.
h Caseworkers ignored or overruled DCF safety guidelines to crowd children into foster homes not equipped to handle them.
h As caseloads rose, child welfare workers skipped home visits and parent training sessions because they could not keep up with required safety checks. They fabricated logs to make it appear as if the sessions took place. When caseworkers lied and omitted information from their reports, children got hurt, according to lawsuits and DCF inspector general reports.
DCF and the nonprofit agencies in charge of foster care repeatedly tried to prevent USA TODAY from obtaining information about foster parents and the allegations against them. They demanded $ 50,000 for search- and- copy fees for disciplinary records.
In reaction to one USA TODAY records request, DCF officials pressed legislators to pass a law to make foster parent names secret from the public – an effort that failed.
In January, DCF Secretary Chad Poppell said in a statement that many problems in Florida’s system stem from the decision to privatize foster care in the early 2000s, putting decision making in the hands of nonprofit groups. DCF “faded into the background and became too distant from the front lines of child welfare,” he said.
“This has led to a fractured system that is not appropriately resourced, lacks bandwidth for increases in children in care and is not performance driven,” Poppell said. “This is not how I would design a system around my own children, and especially not our children in foster care.”
Poppell promised to fight for greater accountability and more “resources to drive performance and positive outcomes for families.”
During Florida’s legislative session, which adjourned in March, he secured at least $ 7 million for a quality assurance office to make sure DCF learns from its mistakes.
He responded to USA TODAY’s reporting by forming a task force to improve the state’s procedures for handling sex abuse investigations.
USA TODAY found that Florida’s child welfare system repeatedly risks children’s safety on foster parents with criminal records and abuse allegations.
In Lee County, child welfare workers placed 20 foster children with a couple over the course of six years despite multiple abuse allegations that DCF declined to explain. The stream finally stopped last year after police were approached by two boys who testified they had been whipped with belts and locked in cages.
“The system is so broken, it makes me want to cry,” said Brandy Towler, whose adoptive daughter lived with a Sarasota County foster parent charged with molestation. “Our most vulnerable children are being preyed upon.”
No safe place to call home
After the Miami Herald published a series of stories in 2014 revealing nearly 500 children had died when DCF left them in abusive homes, legislators pushed to change the fundamentals of Florida’s child welfare law.
Backed by child advocacy groups, lawmakers unanimously passed measures that added investigators to crack down on abusive and neglectful parents and created a critical response team to speed up interventions.
The message: Child safety comes first, even if it breaks up families.
Statewide, total children in the system reached a high- water mark of near-ly 24,000 in 2017 – a 34% increase in five years.
Officials initially set aside $ 16 million to deal with the influx, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
From 2014 through 2016, news reports from around the state showed what happened to foster children who had nowhere to go. They bedded down in office buildings and in cars parked at a Wawa and a Dollar General in Hillsborough County. Infants were placed in emergency shelters designed for older children and cared for by shelter shift workers.
“Foster families are the lifeblood of the system,” said Mike Watkins, chief executive of Big Bend Community Based Care, which manages child welfare in Tallahassee and the Panhandle area. “If you don’t have a place to put these kids, bad things will happen.”
In Alachua County, a suicidal teenager was among the children left to spend the day in the offices of the Partnership for Strong Families, the nonprofit group in charge of child welfare in the Gainesville area. Despite having run away 11 times from March to May 2015 – and once from PSF’s offices eight days earlier – case managers left her “completely unsupervised” in the lobby of their building, according to claims in a lawsuit filed in 2017.
The girl slipped out after telling caretakers she was going to the store. Police found her body the following day 40 miles away.
She had thrown herself 90 feet off a bridge into a ravine.
The lawsuit was settled in mediation. In Collier County, a 9- year- old boy repeatedly told his caseworkers in late 2015 and early 2016 that he did not feel safe in the emergency shelter where he had been placed. “He was afraid of people holding him to the ground,” according to allegations in a lawsuit filed against the organizations charged with his care. By the time caseworkers saw bruises on his legs and arms, he had been sexually assaulted by a 16- year- old shelter resident, the lawsuit said.
Parties in the case reached a settlement last year.
Executives at nonprofit agencies sounded the alarm, begging state officials to send them more money to cover rising costs and find new foster parents.
The hardest- hit agencies had to lay off staff. Others implemented hiring freezes.
Still, they had to find a place to put the increasing number of kids.
Many turned to group homes and institutions, the most expensive housing option in the child welfare system and sometimes the most dangerous.
Nonprofit groups paid the sinceshuttered National Deaf Academy more than $ 600,000 to house 14 children from 2014 through 2016 – after a whistleblower suit claimed that a boy died after staff failed to provide him proper treatment for his diabetes and a girl was forced to crawl on the floor and sit in her own urine after staff refused to provide her with a wheelchair.
“They have incentive to not know what’s going on in these homes, because if they did, they’d have to pull that kid and find a new home,” said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. “The more you overload a system with children who don’t need to be there, the less time they have to find the children really in danger.”
A system sabotaged by lies
Under ideal conditions, social workers should oversee no more than 14 children each month, according to Florida standards. A half- dozen financial reports published over the past six years speak about how child protective investigators in Florida have to deal with caseloads exceeding 20 children every month. The same is true of case managers, who follow up with children after they enter the system.
The larger their caseloads, the more likely they’ll have to cut corners.
Over the past six years, more than 300 child protection investigators, case managers and supervisors have been accused of lying or omitting information from their case files, a USA TODAY review of records from the DCF Office of Inspector General shows.
The workers lied about completing abuse investigations. They lied about interviewing parents, children and alleged molesters. They falsified home visits, embellished details and lied again when confronted.
Former investigations supervisor Beverlie Hyacinthe allegedly signed paperwork falsely claiming that investigators had assessed the safety of all the kids in a home after receiving a hotline call when they hadn’t. A child was abused in the home over the next 10 days until DCF received a second hotline call.
“Provisions were not made to provide for the safety of the children and the initial case was not fully investigated,” a DCF training manager concluded.
At least a dozen child welfare workers who confessed to lying or omitting important information from reports blamed their poor judgment on stress.
Christine Olivieri said she falsified information in a child protection investigation because she was “overloaded.” The child protective investigator in Palm Beach County said she was dealing with 29 cases, sheltering about 20 children, conducting home studies and appearing in court, all while continuing to receive new abuse allegations to investigate.
Even management felt the pressure. Brandy Canada, a supervisor of case managers for Youth and Family Associates in Hillsborough County, said she falsified case notes because she was overwhelmed from overseeing as many as 18 workers at a time, each with their own overgrowing caseloads.
“Many people were quitting or being transferred ... resulting in a high stress and hurry up and get it done mind set,” Canada told inspector general investigators in 2018. “I was not only supervising more than my unit, I was also on call, doing home visits and attending court hearings.”
Focusing on dollars
When Jackie Gonzalez took over as chief executive of Our Kids in September 2014, the agency, which serves Miami- Dade County and the Florida Keys, was experiencing an influx of more than 400 kids and had run up a deficit of $ 10.6 million.
Instead of appealing to the state for more money, Gonzalez focused on cutting costs, slashing a fifth of Our Kids’ payroll.
Our Kids subcontractors were left with insufficient funds to cover their burgeoning expenses, according to a study compiled by DCF. Caseworkers were forced to take on more children, prompting an exodus of experienced employees. More than 3 in 10 left their jobs in 2014.
Spending on foster parents declined by $ 1.5 million from June 2013 to June 2016.
“Jackie ( Gonzalez) cut foster parent mentoring,” said Denise Beeman- Sasiain, a foster mother who heads the South Florida Foster and Adoptive Parents Association. “She cut our support staff. She didn’t personally care if foster care went to nothing.”
Gonzalez said in an email to USA TODAY that “services were not cut for any of the children we were serving at the time.”
Lawsuits and DCF studies examined by USA TODAY and conversations with South Florida child welfare experts show the nonprofit group struggled to provide foster children with safe homes and adequate oversight.
At least one child was molested. Two others didn’t get specialized care and killed themselves.
Our Kids added only 19 foster homes from June 2013 to January 2016 to cope with an influx of more than 420 children.
In Key West, Our Kids placed a 3year- old boy, identified only by his initials of L. B., in a crowded emergency shelter where he was sexually abused by an older boy.
The assault in March 2014 took a toll on L. B.’ s mental health, according to allegations in a lawsuit filed on his behalf, and Our Kids compounded his problems by insisting on placing him with Raquel Fuentes.
A foster mother for only five months, Fuentes already had a bad reputation. Children’s Home Society of Florida, the Our Kids subcontractor that approved her license, expressed concerns about her ability to care for foster kids and refused to send her more. Court- appointed guardians for foster children in the Florida Keys reported that Fuentes used inappropriate punishment methods.
Our Kids officials didn’t respond to those red flags. The lawsuit claims that reports circulated that Fuentes punished L. B. by bathing him in cold water, putting him in time- out “for very long periods of time” and wearing masks to scare him. Within months, the boy began having vomiting episodes tied to stress, according to his doctor.
Our Kids removed L. B. at the beginning of August 2014. Our Kids did not have a chief executive at that time. Frances Allegra, who preceded Gonzalez, left at the end of March, and Gonzalez did not come on board until September.
L. B.’ s mental health worsened over the ensuing months. Without therapeutic or behavioral training for his impulse control, he began “tearing things off the walls in his classroom, knocking things off the teacher’s desk, not listening to directions, drawing on the walls at home, and tearing apart his clothes and bedding,” the lawsuit says.
By November 2015, at just 5 years old, he was placed in a mental hospital. The lawsuit was settled last year. In 2018, Our Kids and its subcontractors still weren’t providing enough therapeutic foster homes and other services to help children cope with the abuse and neglect they suffered, according to claims in a lawsuit filed by Robert Latham, associate director of the Children and Youth Law Clinic at the University of Miami.
“The dramatic increase of children into the system after 2014 wasn’t the problem,” said Latham, who reached a settlement in the case last year. “The lack of follow- up, community services and support was the problem.”
Lauryn Martin- Everett and Naika Venant were troubled teens who never got the intensive therapy they needed, according to the lawsuit.
In December 2016, Lauryn tied a blue scarf around her neck and hanged herself from a doorway at the Florida Keys Youth Shelter.
A month later, Naika – in front of a Facebook audience – took her own life in the same way.