State: Frustration extends to another family agency

Mark and Kelly Tamse's 4-year-old son fell into a swimming pool in foster care and had to be revived with CPR. But it took three days before Florida's child welfare system reached them.

Angela Loring waited six months to be licensed as a foster mother, even though a foster child already lived in her home. Caseworkers lost her application information -- twice -- and failed to make monthly checkups on the girl's safety, she said.

Unanswered phone calls. Overburdened caseworkers. Turnover among staff with the sensitive job of checking on the safety of vulnerable children.

The complaints about Florida's Department of Children and Families have been heard before. But this time the frustrations are aimed at the Family Continuity Program, a Pinellas Park-based nonprofit company hired about two years ago in Pinellas and Pasco counties.

Family Continuity -- part of Gov. Jeb Bush's push for privatization -- is supposed to be a solution to DCF's long history of troubles.

Under Florida's privatization plan, Family Continuity now supervises the foster care programs in Pinellas and Pasco counties. It has a five-year, $118-million contract to supervise foster parents, counsel abusive families and help find adoptive homes for abused kids.

"Overall, we're headed in the right direction and we're going where we should be," Family Continuity director Jeff Richard said.

But several parents, foster parents and officials said Family Continuity's staff often seems unprepared, overworked and unreachable -- problems that can overshadow the good work done by individual caseworkers.

"There are a few that do an excellent job, and then there's a lot that don't do their job," said Doug Harman, a Pasco County foster parent. "I think the biggest complaint I have is you have to continue complaining or you have to get the upper management involved to get anything done."

Foster parents are a key component of Florida's child welfare system. They take in children who have suffered abuse or neglect, as well as the trauma of being removed from home.

Foster parents say they do encounter some good, caring caseworkers employed by Family Continuity and agencies it works with. But they also say Family Continuity often can be maddening, because caseworkers leave for new jobs or the workers give sketchy written information or prove impossible to reach on the phone.

Harman, the foster parent in Pasco County, said he got frustrated by the caseworkers who came for required monthly visits to check on two children in his care.

"For at least nine months, if not a year, we never saw the same caseworker," Harman said.

Caseworkers who did come did not know the children and carried no pictures of them. Harman wondered how they even knew he had the right kids.

In response, Tracy Stodart, Family Continuity's assistant director of operations, said caseworkers were keeping tabs on the children because they saw the kids in other settings.

But other foster parents have similar complaints. Written evaluation forms provided by Family Continuity -- with names deleted -- show their frustration:

When trying to call Family Continuity with an important question, "Days go by," one foster parent wrote. "It takes several calls (and usually ones to a supervisor) to get an answer." This person complained of "a very negative experience with F.C.P. When my obligation to my present foster child is taken care of I will never be a foster parent again."

Another foster parent complained that FCP's disorganization made it difficult to receive subsidized food for foster children through the federal WIC program. "Sometimes we can't get formula because you don't see that we have proper papers."

A third described Family Continuity as helpful and planned to continue as a foster parent, but wrote that "lately we have seen many changes such as a lack of caseworkers, lack of visitations for the child and having a problem on trying to reach a caseworker to get an answer."

Another complaint comes from Angela Loring, who owns a Largo preschool. In April 2001, she took in a 5-year-old girl, at the request of the girl's mother.

She completed foster parent training in October 2001 but did not receive a license until April of this year. Why the delay? Loring said she tried repeatedly to get a caseworker to do a required home study on her house, but months passed. Then, records show, a caseworker lost some of her application information twice on a computer.

The half-year delay meant she and her fiance, Earl Smith, paid to support the girl in their home for six months without the monthly payment foster parents receive. But Smith and Loring said the aggravation, runaround and lack of oversight troubled them far more.

In the meantime, Loring and Smith said, caseworkers did not make all the required monthly visits to their home -- important for checking on children's safety -- that are required by state rules.

Also, Loring said she was told "you just need to supervise the visits" between the girl and her biological mother.

So she allowed the mother into her home to visit her daughter, even though it placed Loring in the uncomfortable position of having to intervene if the mother -- who later relapsed into alcohol abuse -- did anything inappropriate.

She put her foot down when caseworkers urged her to supervise a visit with the father, who has a history of domestic violence.

Family Continuity officials acknowledge making errors in this case and said they are still looking into the allegations about staff missing visits and urging Loring to supervise the family visits. Foster parents are under no obligation whatsoever to supervise those visits, they acknowledged.

Richard, Family Continuity's director, said the foster application took "absolutely too long" and that "there's no question about that, there's no excuse for what happened."

But he added, "It's a rarity. It's not a regular occurrence."

Asked about Family Continuity's overall performance, Lynn Richard, DCF's regional administrator, stressed that it has taken on an extremely complex job that takes time to fully master.

"I think they're still in a developmental stage. I don't think they're mature as a lead agency yet," he said.

Family Continuity's Richard said he believes his organization has now reached the point where the staff is stable and can implement many improvements to the system. He said the agency already has increased the number of positions for caseworkers from 117 to 125 and is about to increase the number to 139. And Richard said Family Continuity has been working closely with many other community organizations that work for children's welfare, which he said is bound to help kids.

"We shoot for perfection, but we're not quite there yet."

Family Continuity also works with parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children, helping them take steps -- drug treatment, parenting classes, counseling or others -- that will enable them to reunite with children who have been put in foster care.

Two of Mark and Kelly Tamse's children were placed in foster care because of questions raised about her ability to supervise the kids safely. But the parents say they were shocked last September when a caseworker called Kelly on the job with distressing news: Her 4-year-old son had fallen in a swimming pool while in foster care. He had to be revived by CPR and was taken to a hospital in Spring Hill, and then to All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg as a precaution.

"I was frustrated, I was upset, I was tense, I was disgusted," Kelly Tamse said. "I got chills."

Just as troubling as the incident itself, the Tamses said, was that it took so long for them to get the news. Kelly Tamse said it was four days before she got the call; Family Continuity said it was three.

Elaine Fulton-Jones, spokeswoman for Family Continuity, said caseworkers tried to reach the Tamses but didn't have the correct phone number in their files. She said such incidents are very rare, but when they occur, staff try to let parents know immediately. As an example, she cited the case of a 2-year-old girl who nearly drowned while in a medical foster home last month in Clearwater. She said staff found a sign language interpreter and went that night to the girl's mother, who is deaf.

"It's just an excuse," Mark Tamse said, when told that caseworkers had said they didn't have the right number. He said caseworkers reached him numerous times when they wanted to remind him of appointments.

"They had my cell phone number, they had my boss' phone number, they had my home phone number," he said.

Joy Maggard of St. Petersburg said her child received a black eye while in foster care after apparently tumbling out of her top bunk, and she didn't find out until she visited her and saw the bruising.

She too wanted to know why she hadn't gotten a call about the injury, which was treated at the emergency room. Fulton-Jones said it was because Family Continuity staff hadn't heard that from the foster mother themselves.

"I was just destroyed," Maggard said. "I wanted to know, why didn't you guys call me?"

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

At a glance

The Family Continuity Program handles much of the child welfare work that used to be the job of the Department of Children and Families in Pinellas and Pasco counties. Among their jobs:

Working with families in which parents or guardians have been accused of abuse or neglect. Caseworkers try to help parents receive counseling, treatment, education or whatever else they need to be able to keep their children in their homes safely.

Foster care. This includes helping to license foster homes, bringing children to and from foster homes, making sure children are placed in appropriate foster homes.

Adoptions. Helping to find adoptive homes for abused and neglected children whose mothers and/or fathers have lost their parental rights.

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