DCF workers feeling “overwhelmed” and “defeated,” new report says

shutterstock_210369697

An internal review by the Department of Children and Families depicts a still dysfunctional agency, with workers feeling “unsupported,” “overwhelmed,” and “defeated.”

The 133-page report, commissioned by DCF Secretary Mike Carroll, was released Thursday afternoon to FloridaPolitics.com in response to a public records request.

It has been referred to informally in DCF circles as the “Sanford Report” after its lead author, retired lawyer Peggy Sanford. 

“Secretary Carroll established a work group to ensure the best practices are in place to protect every child we serve,” spokeswoman Michelle Glady said in an email.

“The department is reviewing the child welfare system and will implement further improvements that keep the best interest of every child at the center of its efforts,” she added. “DCF is fully committed to protecting Florida’s most vulnerable population.”

But the first challenge, the report suggests, is “the broader issue of role confusion among” the department’s child protective investigators, case managers and lawyers. In other words, each group doesn’t always know what its job is and isn’t.

That’s because of a “lack of teamwork,” the report says, which “leads each professional to feel both that he or she does not ‘own the case’ and that he or she is doing a disproportionate amount of work on the case.”

Investigators, for instance, “struggle with the definition of their role,” with many expressing “frustration with being forced to be social workers when they believe their appropriate role to be investigative in nature only,” according to the report.

The agency’s professionals said “they do this work for the most part because of a desire to protect children,” the report says. “They say they leave because they are unable to carve out time for their own families and because they feel unsupported in their jobs. They also reported feeling overwhelmed by the paperwork required in their jobs.”

Almost since its creation in 1996 out of the ashes of the old Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, the state’s child welfare agency has been buffeted by controversy and turmoil.

As recently as last year, lawmakers passed new legislation aimed at preventing child deaths after 5-year-old Phoebe Jonchuck was dropped by her father 60 feet from a bridge into Tampa Bay.

A report after her death “

And in 2014, the Miami Herald’s “Innocents Lost” investigation revealed, “a system that was clearly broken, leaving children unprotected and at risk.”

Indeed, the report says, “outside players such as the judiciary, the GAL (guardians ad litem) and the (news) media exert significant pressure on the professionals, contributing to role confusion and staff turnover.”

Carroll, a 26-year DCF veteran appointed by Gov. Rick Scott in December 2014, formed the Dependency Roles Workgroup last November.

That group was led by Sanford, a former DCF senior attorney and the staff director of the Florida House Select Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1995-96.

Other members include Rebecca Kapusta, the department’s general counsel, and Sandy Bohrer, a partner in the Holland & Knight law firm who has been a DCF special counsel and has long represented the news media, including the Herald.

Among other areas, the work group looked at Children’s Legal Services, which in 2008 began a “prosecutorial model” of pursuing child welfare cases in court.

It hasn’t always worked, the Sanford Report says.

The “attempt to implement a prosecutorial model within the agency context has compounded an already complex dependency system, further confusing the role of CLS and its relationship with other child welfare professionals,” it says. “This confusion is a barrier to the cooperation and communication that is required among these professionals to best … protect Florida’s children.”

Other problems are that “political agendas may play a large role in decision-making” and “the attorney’s personal beliefs about issues such as permanency rather than caseworker expertise dictate what will happen for a child,” according to the report.

After the 2011 death of 10-year-old Nubia Barahona, found in a garbage bag in her adoptive father’s truck, the department began what is calls a “new practice model.” The girl was also in the state’s child welfare system.

The idea was to “gather better information (and) relay information faster,” “conduct better‐quality investigations,” and “offer a more effective engagement strategy to ensure the child and family’s safety and independence,” the report says.

“Florida now has what many experts describe as one of the nation’s most comprehensive and complex child welfare practice models,” according to the report.

But the new model has been hobbled by “very limited resources at a headquarters and regional level to provide hands‐on support to front-line staff” and “a lack of alignment of policy, rule and statute with the new practice, which in turn created conflict among child protective investigators, case managers, Children’s Legal Services, and the judiciary.”

At the same time, the Sanford Report says “these challenges were not unexpected and can be predicted to lessen over time as the model becomes more widely understood and accepted.”

The new practice model and the prosecutorial model “have created an imbalance” in the system, the report concludes.

The good news: “Coordinated training efforts (among all the) professionals who will work together on cases … show the potential for a better understanding of roles on the part of all the professionals.”


Jim Rosica ([email protected]) covers the Florida Legislature, state agencies and courts from Tallahassee. 

The report and appendices can be read in their entirety here and below:

 

Jim Rosica

Jim Rosica is the Tallahassee-based Senior Editor for Florida Politics. He previously was the Tampa Tribune’s statehouse reporter. Before that, he covered three legislative sessions in Florida for The Associated Press. Jim graduated from law school in 2009 after spending nearly a decade covering courts for the Tallahassee Democrat, including reporting on the 2000 presidential recount. He can be reached at [email protected].


4 comments

  • Connie Gist

    April 29, 2016 at 7:23 am

    I, as a former CPI of almost 5 years, have seen the decline in the DCF system. The department seems to care more about statistics and getting the case open and closed within 30 days. Supervisors would get put on a “list” if their reports ran over the time frame. The pressure to investigate and protect children on 40 cases at a time was impossible. I sometimes worked 70 hours per week and then got chastised for it but my concern was for the children. I loved my job and I felt I was good at it. I was able to protect many children while putting their abusers in prison. I could not take the pressure from the politics that were governing my job. Politics has no business in dictating child safety. I am glad this is coming to light, please don’t let this subject just get shoved under the rug, the children need a department the can truly put the safety of the children first and not just triage cases as I was told to do by my the regional director, Marty Fuqua, because we had too many cases each.

  • Midema

    April 30, 2016 at 10:23 am

    CPI’s need to be paid fairly for the hard work that they do. Florida is at the very bottom on the list of salary for this work. This is a big problem and an increase would surely help with retention of employees, which in turn would help with the work load, as each time a CPI leaves, others are left to pick up the slack.

  • Becky Kirsch

    May 3, 2016 at 5:17 pm

    As a former foster parent it appeared to me that a system where the case loads are so high is bound to fail. The responsibility and stress of the job causes high turnover- which exacerbates the situation. The system needs more money to hire more case workers and pay them better.

  • David Cornelisse

    May 7, 2016 at 7:20 pm

    Looks like it’s time to change the name again. That worked so well when it went from HRS to DCF. I worked for HRS/DCF for 24 years and left when management insulted my intelligence one time too many.

Comments are closed.


#FlaPol

Florida Politics is a statewide, new media platform covering campaigns, elections, government, policy, and lobbying in Florida. This platform and all of its content are owned by Extensive Enterprises Media.

Publisher: Peter Schorsch @PeterSchorschFL

Contributors & reporters: Phil Ammann, Drew Dixon, Roseanne Dunkelberger, A.G. Gancarski, Anne Geggis, Ryan Nicol, Jacob Ogles, Cole Pepper, Gray Rohrer, Jesse Scheckner, Christine Sexton, Drew Wilson, and Mike Wright.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @PeterSchorschFL
Phone: (727) 642-3162
Address: 204 37th Avenue North #182
St. Petersburg, Florida 33704




Sign up for Sunburn


Categories