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State orders massive abuse cases review
By CURTIS KRUEGER, Times Staff Writer The head of the state's social services agency has ordered a file-by-file review of thousands of child abuse cases that were investigated by a Pinellas Park company whose contract was abruptly terminated this week. The massive review for the already overburdened Department of Children and Families is necessary to determine "if the children were, in fact, safe," said DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney. She defended the way her agency oversaw the nonprofit company, which the state hired to help resolve abuse and neglect cases that in some instances had lingered for years. The company, the Florida Task Force for the Protection of Abused and Neglected Children, has come under investigation for sloppy work and possible falsification of records. State officials are trying to determine whether some employees, under pressure to meet weekly quotas, fudged records to finish cases. Kearney said it was DCF's own contract team that revealed questionable work last month in Martin, Indian River, Okeechobee and St. Lucie counties. And she said DCF's inspector general launched an investigation shortly after a recently fired Task Force employee called Kearney and complained that workers had falsified documents in their rush to close cases. "It shows, frankly, that there was appropriate oversight," Kearney said. That oversight is "absolutely critical" as the department relies on private nonprofit companies to do work traditionally handled by the department, she said. But Jack Levine, president of the Center for Florida's Children, wondered whether DCF should have known about the problem before now. The Task Force has been on the job more than 18 months, "quite a long time for checking the progress and the completeness of a task with such an enormous import." he said. He also questioned how the department will find the staff to dig back into thousands of files that were investigated by the Task Force, particularly when DCF itself has struggled with a backlog of cases. The department's backlogged cases stood at 30,108 last month. But Kearney said the department has reduced its backlog from 51,338 cases in January 2001, and said DCF's staff had closed more cases than the Task Force. While Kearney was defending DCF, some former Task Force workers were defending their agency, saying the state's criticism was vastly overblown. They said DCF had aggravated matters by assigning the Task Force to cases that involved a relatively high risk of danger to a child -- not the low-risk cases they were contracted to handle. Kay Garner, a Task Force supervisor who previously held a similar position at DCF, said she thinks employees at both agencies diligently worked to protect children. Garner said the Task Force's contract called for its staff to take over cases considered relatively low-risk -- for example, cases in which state investigators had visited the child and the family, and made sure they were getting the help they needed. The Task Force might handle a followup visit, paperwork and a few other tasks. But Garner said the Task Force frequently was given moderate-risk cases -- for example, a child over the age of 5 who had been bruised in a family with some indications of domestic violence. High-risk cases were supposed to be handled by DCF and never handed over to the Task Force. These cases might include allegations of serious physical injury to children younger than 5, who might need to be removed from the home. Former Task Force employees said they sometimes received these cases but generally returned them to DCF. DCF officials also had assured Task Force staff they had uncovered no negative "child safety issues" in their review of the four-county Fort Pierce District, said Tracy Loomis, executive director and vice president of the Task Force. But that review was a key point in DCF's rare decision to sever its contracts with the Task Force. Loomis said several criticisms in that review were for standards not covered in the contract. -- Times staff writer Curtis Krueger can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or by calling (727) 893-8232.
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From the Times state desk Lucy Morgan
From the state wire
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