Exactly who is derelict at his job, Gov. Bush?

MELONE E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times
published July 18, 2002

Robert Mistretta makes this chilling prediction:

If you open the file of any child who has come to the attention of the Department of Children and Families, you will find something wrong, something that the investigator hasn't done, for the cold, simple reason that she or he has too much to do. And whatever that something is, it will be enough to get the worker fired.

Mistretta supervised the last DCF worker who had the case of Alfredo Montes, the 2-year-old Polk County boy allegedly killed by an acquaintance of his mother because he had soiled his pants.

The governor, that know-it-all, called Mistretta derelict. But when Mistretta tells his story, a sharply different picture emerges that the governor might find inconvenient but also instructive.

Between the time the first complaint about Alfredo Montes' family was logged in nearly two years ago and Alfredo's death this month, no fewer than three supervisors and three investigators had a piece of that case. In keeping with DCF's tradition of perpetual employee turmoil, people quit, or were fired, and the file was passed on to new face after new face, until it landed on Mistretta's desk last May, along with 190 other cases. Some of the cases dated back four years.

Mistretta's job was to go through them all and make sure the workers were handling the cases appropriately. By the time he was fired last week, he had whittled his backlog down to 110 cases. He thinks he might have saved a life or two. But in those two months, he never got to the Montes file. It was just one more pile of papers in a thick stack.

"I did the best I could," he said. "I was fired because one of the cases I didn't get to blew up."

I wish I could remember how often I have written about the deaths of children whom the state was -- theoretically -- trying to help. I wish I could remember how many times I have written, the system is broken.

There is too much work for too few people, and conducting ritual sacrifices of DCF employees who under the circumstances cannot help but fail is no way to fix the problem.

Jeb Bush knows this. He knows that hiring more people to ease the caseloads and training them adequately costs honest-to-God money. Spending money to save the lives of children is not, alas, in the Tallahassee playbook.

But you better believe that most Floridians are tired of these pathetic events. In just two years -- 1999 through 2000 -- 60 children who had been brought to DCF's attention died. And when they don't die, they sometimes go poof and disappear, like Rilya Wilson. So many children suffer that we hardly look like a civilized state. Is this what we want? Is this what Gov. Bush is willing to justify?

In a fury after the Wilson case, Bush ordered every caseworker in the state to go out in the field and meet face to face with their charges. Then he ordered supervisors like Robert Mistretta to do the same.

That kept Mistretta from tackling his backlog for some weeks -- a delay that might have played a role in his inability to get to the Alfredo Montes file. And if he had gotten to the Montes file when the last complaint came in on July 1, he might have made sure his investigator, Erica Jones, tried again to find the family.

Nobody knew it was too late by then. Investigators believe that Alfredo was killed that day, July 1.

Robert Mistretta said he loved his job. The smiles of children he helped outweighed the constant anxiety, the continual pressure that had him lurching from file to file, from crisis to crisis.

Derelict, the governor called him. Bush almost certainly won't do it, but he ought to spend a couple of days shadowing a DCF supervisor. He ought to watch the choices a diligent DCF worker is forced to make, about which case he must get to now, and which can wait until tomorrow. Bush should watch somebody play Solomon for about $30,000 a year. Maybe it would open his eyes.

-- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3402.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright