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Lawmakers are requiring the Department of Children and Families to slow down the transition to community-based care.
Gov. Jeb Bush's plan to fast-track child-welfare privatization has hit a few well-placed speed bumps. Concerned that Bush and Department of Children and Families Secretary Jerry Regier are rushing privatization, Florida lawmakers approved a bill requiring DCF to assess and certify the fitness of communities seeking to take over child-protection and foster-care duties from the state. The certification mandate may not solve all of the problems that have plagued child-welfare privatization thus far, but it couldn't hurt - and might actually help keep some kids from being hurt.
DCF recently began implementing a "community readiness" process on its own. The new law is intended to strengthen those reviews and their consequences. Under the bill (SB 1454), which has not yet been signed by Bush, DCF would have to work with local residents and experienced providers to judge a community's technical and financial fitness to take on the job. No services could be transferred until DCF certified to the governor and Legislature, with specific evidence, that the community is ready. Legislative auditors, with the help of outside experts, would review DCF's criteria and decisions and report to lawmakers twice a year.
The new law is hardly the green light Regier must have hoped for when, on the eve of the regular session, he announced plans to accelerate the switchover to communities by six months. Instead of endorsing that shortened privatization schedule, lawmakers lifted the previous deadline - December of 2004 - altogether. Their message is clear: Done right, the certifications should slow down the transition to a privatized system, not speed it up.
"We have grave concerns about community-based care moving so quickly that we end up with a system less successful than what we had before," Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, who chairs the Senate's Children and Families Committee, told the Times. "Until we know that the community is ready and everyone is buying into the change, the transition will not work."
Lynn originally wanted DCF to seek legislative approval before signing up any new counties, but that provision was later dropped. Will the new certifications add protection and stability to the transition? The question may be debatable, but the need is not. In several counties the community-based care initiative has put children at risk. Most recently, concern has centered on Volusia and Flagler counties, where high caseloads and poor casework have marred the handoff from the state to community.
Florida is in the middle of the most ambitious child-welfare privatization efforts in the nation. After years of condoning DCF's rush, lawmakers have finally installed a yellow light in the road. Community-based care may still ultimately succeed in Florida, but only if the state proceeds with more caution.