Unless Gov. Jeb Bush makes some changes as his special panel suggests, the Department of Children and Families will continue to be "underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated and overworked.''

This week's report from the governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Child Protection offers few surprises. Along with some common-sense suggestions for the Department of Children and Families, it makes the same basic plea lawmakers have heard -- and ignored -- for years: Put more money into foster-care guardians, caseworker pay and training, and abuse prevention.

What does come as a mild surprise, though, is just how timidly Gov. Jeb Bush has embraced the work of his own panel. Bush's lukewarm reaction and post-report posturing only bolster his critics, who charged from the outset that the governor was trying to buy time, not real change, from a panel hand-picked by DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney herself.

Bush responded to the panel's highest priority -- funding a guardian ad litem for every foster child -- by forming yet another study group, giving no assurance he would eventually push for the needed funds.

He downplayed the need for higher caseworker salaries, consigning the issue to some overall review at a later, unspecified date. And instead of acknowledging that Florida's main prevention programs are stretched far too thin, Bush issued a press release trumpeting his own admirable, yet ultimately inadequate, record on funding Healthy Families.

By the time Bush told reporters that he was "wary" of the panel's suggestion to call a special session on child welfare, critics could be forgiven for wondering exactly which suggestions Bush was not wary of.

While reluctant to embrace most changes requiring money, Bush recast the panel's findings in the light most favorable to his administration. He seized on the panel's support for his move to community-based care but conveniently ignored the panel's major warning: that privatization will cost more, not less, than the current state-run system. He used the occasion of the report's release to boast of his past investments in child welfare, while remaining conspicuously silent on any commitment to make future ones.

The panel's work -- and Florida's foster children -- deserve better in the wake of the Rilya Wilson tragedy. Running the gamut from micro-managing to visionary, most of the panel's suggestions are good ones that could, if implemented, help correct what it found to be DCF's "manifest" problems.

Unfortunately, the panel only stoked the skepticism over the manner of its appointment by letting Kearney off the hook, as if accountability stops outside her door. While its recommendation not to oust Kearney is defensible -- Florida has a long history of child-welfare scandals, no matter the party affiliation of the DCF head then in charge -- the panel came off sounding at times more like Kearney's apologists than truly independent reviewers.

Even so, the panel got the bottom line right, unoriginal though it may be: "DCF is underfunded, understaffed, underappreciated and overworked. So it ever has been. So it remains."

And so it will continue -- unless Gov. Bush shows greater leadership by backing changes that are imperative and expensive.

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