A sample of the 30,000 cases closed between September and June indicates nearly 14% left children in harm's way.
By Associated Press
Published August 27, 2003
MIAMI - An internal review by the Department of Children and Families has found that its drive to reduce the backlog of incomplete child abuse investigations may have left thousands of children "at risk of harm."
From September 2002 to June, child welfare investigators closed nearly 30,000 open abuse and neglect projects as part of Secretary Jerry Regier's work to overhaul the troubled agency after taking office in August 2002. The number of backlogged cases now stands at about 2,000.
But internal DCF records show that among a representative sample of 2,682 of the closed cases statewide, nearly 14 percent appeared to leave children "at risk of harm" or, at the very least, made it impossible to determine from paperwork whether the children were safe.
Regier disputed that so many children were truly at risk after their cases were closed, saying many were deemed at risk because paperwork was incomplete.
And he said that when the audit found cases to have been improperly closed, they were reopened.
"Rather than proof of inaction, discovering these issues simply proves that the process works," Regier said. "It functioned as it was designed to do."
The report indicates that South Florida children were left at the greatest risk. About 33 percent of the cases closed in Palm Beach County left children at risk. About 17 percent in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties were closed improperly.
"It is just a matter of time before something happens to one of these kids," said Cheleene Schembera, a 30-year social services administrator in Florida who worked most recently as a temporary district administrator in Miami.
Schembera was leading the DCF's Miami district during the end of the backlog project and recalled being concerned about the method administrators employed. She said that by setting strict deadlines for reducing the number of open cases, the agency increased the potential for mistakes.
"There was considerable pressure to meet the objectives for the time periods," Schembera said. "In effect, it was a quota."
The agency has written procedures and requirements for when a case can be closed and an investigator first must get a supervisor's approval, said DCF spokeswoman Jackie Cooper.
Regier said that in most of the closed cases where children appeared to have been left at risk, "district management found that appropriate casework had occurred; however, the documentation in the file was lacking."
The agency has been under heavy scrutiny since officials discovered in April 2002 that Rilya Wilson disappeared from state care at least 15 months before anyone noticed. The 5-year-old Miami girl is still listed as missing.
The Miami Herald reported Tuesday that an audit by the DCF's quality assurance office shows that 13.6 percent of the closed cases statewide left children at "Priority 1" risk.
Priority 1 cases were defined as reports "in which the children either appeared to be left at risk of harm, or there were significant issues, such as maltreatments, risk factors, essential casework activities, that were not addressed" - or that the caseworker could not determine whether a child was safe.
