Opinion: DCF under stress

These are difficult days for the Department of Children and Families, the state agency charged with protecting children from abuse and neglect. First, a local task force blasted the department for sitting on high-risk child-abuse cases and losing or fudging key files. Then, last week, federal auditors gave the department low marks on several important measures of child welfare. Now comes a double-whammy from an internal audit in Central Florida: It concludes that DCF has done a lousy job of keeping foster children safe and has inappropriately held dozens of them in a center for the mentally ill for months at a time.

The bad publicity and its fallout are sure to make life harder for DCF workers, most of whom show up every day out of a sense of obligation to vulnerable children, not the gratitude of a historically indifferent public. But whatever empathy the string of setbacks might evoke for DCF workers, it pales in comparison to the concern they raise for the real victims -- the children whose safety depends on those workers. Taken together, the allegations and findings suggest a child-welfare system in chaos, with too many children coming in -- and too few workers, families and supports to care for them once they do.

DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney has already put some changes in place, at least in response to the Central Florida audit. Caseworkers will make more surprise visits at foster homes and work more closely with department managers, among other things. Those are necessary steps, but they don't get to the core of the problem. To keep more children safe in foster care, Florida has to do a better job of keeping children out of the system.

After Clermont's young Kayla McKean was beaten to death in 1998, the number of calls to the state's abuse hotline spiked to record levels, as did the number of children removed from their homes. Recent audits confirm that the system remains under enormous stress. Reducing that stress will require increased monitoring of children brought into the system and more help for at-risk families.

That doesn't mean DCF should be cowed into leaving abused children with their biological parents when safety demands otherwise. Kearney is right to put child safety above other considerations. But it does mean giving abusive parents -- at least those who are able and willing to change -- help in putting their families back together. Better yet, the state should recommit itself to preventing abuse from the outset, through efforts such as Healthy Families Florida, the voluntary and demonstrably successful home-visitation program that works with parents of newborns.

More than any other fix, prevention is the key to stemming the tide of bad audits -- and the abuse, by caretakers and the state, that gives rise to them.

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