The recent firing of a Pinellas Park-based task force has the state Department of Children and Families, not just the ousted group, feeling the heat. The task force, terminated two years after being hired to help clear a backlog of child-abuse cases, has accused DCF of sitting on high-risk investigations and then forwarding many files with key records missing. Tracy Loomis, the task force's vice president, says DCF used her group as a scapegoat and is "literally getting away with murder."

Those are serious allegations, and they are consistent in tenor, though not scope, with what DCF's internal auditors found last year: that DCF workers in Lake County turned over files with lost or missing records and improperly closed serious abuse investigations when concerns for child safety demanded otherwise. With the backlog of investigations surging to more than 50,000 cases at one point, it is not hard to envision how the same pressures that drove DCF to recruit the task force in the first place might have resulted in chaotic, if not lax, investigations at DCF's end.

DCF's inspector general is reviewing the task force's claims. Shoddy or rushed investigations can't be tolerated, especially when the safety of Florida's children hangs in the balance. That's true whether the investigations are performed by private contractors or by the state that hired them.

Though DCF's backlog is easing -- thanks in part to a decline in calls to the child-abuse hotline -- the high volume of cases coming into the system continues to undercut workers' ability to investigate each complaint fully. While DCF is commencing its investigations more promptly, its investigators are able to visit fewer alleged victims on a timely basis, according to recent state and federal audits. It still has more than 6,400 investigations more than a year old -- contrary to law -- and that's not counting the ones that may have to be reopened in the wake of the task-force fiasco.

In the long term, DCF may not be able to solve its problems with investigations until it stems the flow of cases requiring them. It should start by making sure abuse complaints are properly screened by the abuse hotline.

In the wake of several high-profile cases of child deaths, Florida's legislators in 1999 changed the law so that reports from doctors, teachers and principals may not be screened out by the hotline -- no matter how far afield -- but must instead be referred to DCF for full investigations. That provision may be exacerbating caseload pressures more than it is enhancing safety. An earlier study found that at least 35 percent of reports passed on for investigation should have been screened out. The danger is obvious: Sending investigators out on every call makes it more likely that they will be distracted when a serious case comes in.

Of course, child-abuse investigations can best be reduced by reducing child abuse itself. Florida's leaders say they support child-abuse prevention, yet the state's leading prevention vehicle -- Healthy Families Florida -- is funded at a level to serve less than one-third of the families needing its services.

Add that to the list of indictments against the system.

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