State dumps abuse investigation agency

A nonprofit company hired to help clear an enormous backlog of child abuse cases is stripped of its contracts following allegations of shoddy work.

By CURTIS KRUEGER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 8, 2002

PINELLAS PARK -- Amid mounting allegations of shoddy work and falsified records, the state Thursday canceled multimillion-dollar contracts with a Pinellas Park company it hired to investigate child abuse cases.

The move is a blow not only to the nonprofit company, but also to state Department of Children and Families Secretary Kathleen Kearney, who just last week proudly recounted in an interview how rapidly the department had cut its backlog of abuse cases.

The cancellations mean that already overworked state and local investigators are likely to get even higher case loads as the department severs ties with the company that had investigated more than 10,000 cases the department was too busy to manage.

"Tomorrow I have to tell 50 employees how to apply for unemployment," said Tracy Loomis, vice president and executive director of the company, Florida Task Force for the Protection of Abused and Neglected Children. "It's not a good thing."

But state officials believe it had become a necessary after former employees of the nonprofit Task Force said they were pushed to meet "quotas" by completing seven, nine or more abuse cases per week; and allegations surfaced that some beleaguered workers may have fudged records to finish cases.

In addition to those complaints:

The Task Force employed at least three investigators previously fired by DCF, one of them for falsifying records in child abuse cases. Two of them worked in District 13, a five-county region that includes Citrus and Hernando counties, and DCF personnel recommended against hiring them. One of them -- the worker accused of falsifications -- eventually was let go.

District 13 auditors reviewed a sample of cases handled by the Task Force and found problems: 75 percent of the cases did not contain a required background check on adults living with an abused or neglected child; numerous files failed to show that workers had been properly trained.

In Miami-Dade County and the four-county region of Martin, St. Lucie, Okeechobee and Indian River counties, DCF found that workers frequently failed to assess risks to children in abuse cases and neglected to complete face-to-face interviews.

At least $2.4-million of the Task Force's state contracts were no-bid contracts, under a provision of state law that allows contractors to avoid the bidding process when providing "prevention services."

Despite those allegations, Loomis, the Task Force director, said Thursday she had no idea why the contracts were canceled. In a previous interview, she stressed that case workers always were trained to put safety first and provide accurate reports.

The cancellations mark a surprising reversal for a nonprofit company that in less than two years amassed more than $6-million in state contracts.

The move also presents a significant challenge for DCF. Dogged for years by complaints of inept investigations, the agency increasingly has turned to outside companies to take over the care of abused and neglected kids.

DCF general counsel Josefina M. Tamayo on Thursday invoked a provision of the contracts that allows the state to cancel them with 30-days notice. The state is not required to detail the reasons for canceling, and Tamayo declined to do so.

For state officials, the next step is to take back hundreds, if not thousands, of files from Task Force employees.

But that also presents a problem. The state in recent years has become so overwhelmed with child abuse reports that in January of 2001 it amassed a backlog of 51,388 cases. Legislative auditors had slammed the department for failing to handle the cases quickly enough.

Each one of those cases represents a phoned-in child abuse or neglect case, and under state law each one must be fully investigated. Some were partly investigated, but lingered on case workers' desks for as long as two years.

By last month, the department had reduced the backlog to 30,108 cases. A followup legislative report cited a major reason for this success: the Task Force, which it said was closing 440 to 500 cases in one district alone.

Now the Department of Children and Families must investigate its own backlogged cases without the benefit of outside help.

The Pasco Sheriff Office, which handles its own child abuse investigations, also has a contract with the Task Force for backlogged cases. The Sheriff's Office was reviewing the Task Force's work even before the DCF's cancellations. In Pinellas County, the Sheriff's Office had been negotiating with the task force but suspended all talks once the controversy surfaced.

In addition to handling its own backlogged cases, DCF may need to reopen some of the cases that previously had been considered closed by the task force, DCF spokeswomen LaNedra Carroll and Cecka Green said.

They said the department has not decided whether to hire outside contractors to investigate backlogged abuse cases. Instead, the DCF staff is focusing efforts on transferring the open cases from the Task Force to the department.

Last month, a Task Force employee touched off an investigation by phoning DCF workers to complain of falsified records. In spite of the cancellations, that DCF investigation will continue.

-- Times staff writer Curtis Krueger can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or by calling (727) 893-8232.

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