Potential showdown turns warm and fuzzy

DCF leaders, community agencies work to mend a growing divide.

By MELANIE AVE, Times Staff Writer
Published September 6, 2007

Gov. Charlie Crist gives the keynote speech at the Department of Children and Families conference in Orlando. "I wish everybody had two great parents like I did," Crist said. "You provide that opportunity to so many more of Florida's children because you care. Your duty and your calling and your expectation is to care."
	[AP photo]

ORLANDO - It should have been a showdown. But it turned out more like a pleasant family reunion Wednesday.

It's been three years since Florida completely privatized its child welfare system to community-based agencies.

But in that time, many officials at the Department of Children and Families believe the agencies have gotten too far afield, too independent, too separate, like a teenager driving away in his parent's car without permission.

The growing divide between the state and the 20 agencies it funds became glaringly obvious in June when authorities discovered a missing 2-year-old Pinellas County foster girl nine months after she disappeared. Numerous cracks in the state's child welfare system and several public and private agencies involved were faulted.

A DCF review of the agency directly responsible for the girl, the Sarasota Family YMCA, is nearing an end.

The Courtney Clark case so angered DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth that he called for more oversight of all its agency partners. An effort is under way, and recommendations are expected in the coming weeks.

So on Wednesday, some people expected fireworks as 100 of the DCF's top leaders and the agencies they hope to rein in gathered around the same table for the first time ever at a statewide conference of people involved in child welfare.

Butterworth told the historic meeting, held at the three-day Dependency Summit at the J.W. Marriott Hotel, to expect bumps in the road as the agency and its relationships change.

He said the DCF of the future will be transparent, accountable and competent.

"We will disagree with each other from time to time," Butterworth said. "Let us not be disagreeable. I'm very committed to this being a new DCF.

"DCF is not here to protect itself. DCF is here to defend the child. That is a big distinction, and I don't think it's unfair to ask the same thing of our community-based partners."

Earlier in the day, Gov. Charlie Crist thanked the 1,500 caseworkers, agency administrators, investigators, judges, child advocates and juvenile workers for doing "God's work" and encouraged them not to break the public's trust for the sake of abused and neglected children.

He encouraged all those involved with foster children to work as a team.

"I wish everybody had two great parents like I did," Crist said in the conference's keynote address. "You provide that opportunity to so many more of Florida's children because you care. Your duty and your calling and your expectation is to care."

Butterworth said his goal is to improve the child welfare system. Even so, he said he believes children are better off under the state's public-private system than it was under the old, government-only one.

"Can we do better?" he asked. "Of course we can do better."

Jeff Rainey, chief executive officer of Hillsborough Kids Inc., which oversees 4,000 foster kids in Hillsborough County, said he welcomes more oversight by the DCF.

"It's a partnership," he said. "But at the end of the day we know they hold the money and the ultimate responsibility for the children."

Even the Sarasota Family YMCA - which provides foster care in Pinellas, Pasco, Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties - embraced a tighter relationship with the agency that could cancel its $72-million contracts.

"When you get together to share information," said Lee Johnson, executive vice president of the Sarasota Family YMCA, "it's good."

Melanie Ave can be reached at 727 893-8813 or mave@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 5, 2007, 23:15:16]