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As funds for foster kids grow, care slides at Sarasota YMCA

Florida's biggest agency is at the center of crises and the bottom of rankings.

By MELANIE AVE, Times Staff Writer
Published July 29, 2007

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Kane Plaza houses the Sarasota YMCA headquarters. DCF pays 60 percent of its lease; the YMCA is part owner of the building.
	[Sarasota Herald-Tribune]

ADVERTISEMENT Carl Weinrich's salary and benefits as CEO of the YMCA have risen 75 percent since 1998, to $254,490.

SARASOTA - The downtown headquarters of the Sarasota Family YMCA is in a 10-story Spanish-style building flanked by stately palm trees. A chandelier lights the marble-floored lobby. Valet parking out front is free.

The Sarasota YMCA, which entered the state's foster care business 10 years ago, is now one of the oldest and richest private child welfare agencies in Florida.

Since 1998, its first full year of foster work, the Sarasota YMCA's annual revenue has grown 379 percent, from $19-million to $91-million.

It receives $72-million to care for abused and neglected children in five counties, including Pinellas and Pasco. Last year its CEO, Carl Weinrich, made $254,000, far more than the man who oversees the state's entire child welfare system.

But for all the money, the Sarasota YMCA is faltering in its most basic mission: protecting children. Though its funding per child was the highest among 20 community child care agencies, its overall performance was the worst. In several key categories, including salaries of caseworkers, it ranks at or near the bottom, state records show.

In the last two months, the Sarasota YMCA's shortcomings were revealed in two high-profile cases: a 2-year-old former Pinellas County foster girl, Courtney Clark, who disappeared for nine months, and an 18-month-old Manatee County girl who suffocated under a stove.

"The Sarasota YMCA in the last couple of years has gotten away from being focused on the children," said Andrea Moore, executive director of the advocacy group Florida's Children First.

State Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, who chairs the Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs, said she wants to hold public hearings statewide to ensure mistakes like those in Courtney Clark's case are not repeated.

"I'm a supporter of ... privatization," Storms said. "I'm not such a supporter that I will ignore problems, glaring problems, or give them a pass when they fail."

At the bottom

The move to privatize the state's child welfare system stemmed from a 1994 conversation between former Gov. Jeb Bush and Weinrich, after several scandals involving missing and dead children.

Now, 20 community agencies involved in 22 projects provide care for Florida's 45,000 abused and neglected children. The state Department of Children and Families oversees their contracts, doling out $719-million a year.

The Sarasota YMCA is the biggest, overseeing 4,600 kids in Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, De Soto and Sarasota counties, in two separate contracts.

In its latest report for fiscal year 2006-07, DCF ranked the YMCA South - which covers Manatee, De Soto and Sarasota - the worst performer, even as it received the state's second-highest overall funding and the highest per child funding.

On average, the state paid $12,540 per year to care for a child. The YMCA South received $17,982 per child.

The YMCA North, which includes Pinellas and Pasco, also ranked poorly, coming in 19th out of 22. Its per child funding was $10,336.

In Pinellas and Pasco, the agency had the state's worst record for the number of missing foster children during the first quarter of 2007. The state's goal is to have only 10 out of every 1,000 foster children missing most are runaways who turn up soon after disappearing. The Sarasota YMCA rate was three times higher, with 32 out of 1,000 children missing.

Quality should follow funding, said Nick Cox, DCF's regional director in Tampa.

"When an agency is funded, and funded appropriately, you want to make sure performance does follow," he said.

Sarasota YMCA's Weinrich said money doesn't always translate into better performance because of complicating factors that vary with the children and the counties where they live.

"It's always good to measure stuff and try and compare (community agencies) and I think it's healthy," he said. "But you don't want to hang the whole thing on that."

Weinrich attributed the agency's poor performance in the north to its continuing struggle with taking over after the failing Family Continuity Programs in 2004. In the south, he partly faulted poor management by agency subcontractors. "There's no excuse down here," he said.

Because of its lackluster performance, the Sarasota YMCA this spring put case management services out to bid for the three southern counties, eventually hiring two new agencies and rehiring two others.

Peter Howard, director of one of the former subcontractors, the Florida Center for Child and Family Development in Sarasota, says the Sarasota YMCA suffers from misplaced priorities.

"Their money doesn't make it to the kids," Howard said. "Their bureaucracy just keeps growing and growing and growing."

Howard recently accused the Sarasota YMCA of mismanagement and has asked DCF to investigate the bidding process that cut his group out.

Weinrich said he is considering a defamation suit against Howard.

Staff costs grow

Last year, the Sarasota YMCA spent 94 percent of its money on programs and almost 4 percent on management, including the salaries of nine executives.

Management expenses have nearly doubled since 1998, from $1.5-million to $2.6-million.

In 1998, seven employees made more than $50,000, according to the agency's federal income tax records.

In 2006, at least 48 employees earned that amount or more.

Some executives' pay doubled in that time.

Weinrich's salary and benefits rose 75 percent to $254,490. That's more than the $177,902 state Department of Children and Families Secretary Bob Butterworth is paid to oversee Florida's entire child welfare system.

Salaries have risen, Weinrich said, because the agency's foster responsibilities have grown.

By comparison, the Sarasota YMCA's caseworkers are among the state's lowest paid. The starting salary is $27,000 a year, compared with the state average of $29,679, making it the second-lowest in Florida, according to a study for the Legislature released last year.

Weinrich downplayed the importance of caseworker salaries, but added they can receive bonuses by becoming certified, which is not reflected in the starting pay. Plus, he said, departing workers seldom cite pay as a factor.

"Almost every time it's about the stress or complexity of the work or the amount of paperwork," he said.

Sarasota foster parent Judi Lee, 54, said better pay often results in more qualified workers and better care.

From her vantage, it's hard not to contrast the agency's wealth with its performance.

"When you're an agency doing child welfare, there clearly is a lack of balance when you have one of the nicest offices and complexes in the city," she said. "That money is supposed to translate to the children and their level of support."

The Sarasota YMCA has renovated and built several facilities in the last five years, including an 80,000-square-foot branch building and a water park that includes a splash area and two-story slides. It also has a teen game center and an outdoor alpine climbing tower.

Weinrich said none of that was paid for with money earmarked for foster care.

In 2000, the agency moved its headquarters to the 10-story Kane Plaza, which is owned by a for-profit company in which the YMCA is a partner, Y Associates.

DCF pays 60 percent of the YMCA's lease for two floors there, about $234,000 annually, some of which is returned to the YMCA as part owner of the building.

Weinrich conceded the agency uses state funds to pay itself to lease the building, but said the alternative is worse. "There's not a thing wrong with it. We could rent space and throw money down a rat hole."

Lack of oversight

Since the state moved to privatize the child welfare system, a 2006 state audit said the per child cost of care has grown nearly 70 percent when adjusted for inflation.

Chris Card, a former Sarasota YMCA official who helped design Bush's privatized foster system, attributes the ballooning cost to the state's past record of underfunding foster care.

The problem now, he said, is that DCF needs to improve its oversight of the community groups.

"That's the big question: Is it being spent properly?" said Card, regional vice president of Providence Service Corp., a foster management subcontractor. "If I'm giving you an extra dollar, what am I getting extra?"

Improving foster care goes beyond dollars and cents, said Moore, of Florida's Children First.

"You can't merely throw money at a problem," she said. "I believe the (agency) contracts need to be rewritten so there's a clear understanding by everybody of what they are expected to do, what things government money can be spent on and what will happen if they cannot improve their performance."

DCF Secretary Butterworth, who is pushing for reforms to the state's public-private child welfare system after the Courtney Clark case, has called for closer oversight of all the community agencies such as the Sarasota YMCA.

"We have contracted out a large responsibility dealing with child welfare in the state of Florida," Butterworth said. "But the state is ultimately responsible."

Courtney's mother took her from a Lake County foster home in September. It took her caseworker four months to report her missing to law enforcement.

In June, police found her and two younger sisters unharmed amid a gruesome scene in a Wisconsin home. A starving and mutilated 11-year-old boy was found in a closet, his mother's body buried in the back yard.

Four people, including Courtney's mother, face murder and child abuse charges.

A DCF inspector general report found numerous flaws in the system, including the state's lax oversight of its contractors.

Courtney's aunt, Stacye Scarborough, 30, of Ocklawaha, said Courtney would not have disappeared had the YMCA acted on her request last year to take the children.

She said she was not surprised to learn about the Sarasota YMCA's high funding rate and poor overall performance.

"They're incompetent," Scarborough said. "They're paid to do a job with most the precious things on Earth, these children.

"If they'd done their job right, these kids would have never been taken out of state," she said. "There wouldn't be this dead woman and this tortured little boy. I have nothing good to say about them. I'm so disappointed in the state of Florida."

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Melanie Ave can be reached at (727) 893-8813 or mave@sptimes.com.

Fast Facts:

Sarasota YMCA, then and now

1998

Total revenue: $18.7-million

CEO salary: $145,679

Employees earning over $50,000: 7

Total employees: 605

Net worth: $8-million

2006

Total revenue: $90.9-million

CEO salary: $254,490

Employees earning over $50,000: 48

Total employees: 938

Net worth: $27.5-million

Source: 1997 and 2005, IRS 990 forms for Sarasota YMCA and YMCA Children, Youth and Family Services Inc.

A comparison of agency heads

Carl Weinrich, Sarasota YMCA CEO

Salary: $254,490

Annual budget: $90.9-million

Employees: 938

Bob Butterworth, Secretary of Florida's Department of Children and Families

Salary: $177,902

Annual budget: $1.5-billion

Employees: 14,000

[Last modified July 29, 2007, 00:26:43]