A foster care challenge

Pinellas was the first county in the nation to create an independent property tax-supported agency to watch over children, but the latest failure in community-based foster care has state Department of Children and Families secretary Bob Butterworth raising a fair question.

"Right now, we don't have the people here taking ownership in the child welfare system," Butterworth said Tuesday. "This community, we hope, will come up to the plate."

We are confident it will.

Butterworth has taken the first step, which is to end the state's contract with the Sarasota Family YMCA in Pinellas and Pasco counties. The YMCA stepped in to fill a void left three years ago by the financial failure of the Family Continuity Programs in Pinellas, but not much has improved. A task force appointed to look at all five counties under the YMCA's contract described Pinellas as "in crisis mode," with caseworker turnover at 70 percent and caseloads exceeding 40 children.

A new agency for Pinellas and Pasco must be in place by July 1, and this is not easy work. Since Florida began turning over child-welfare responsibilities to community organizations a decade ago, they have managed to add foster homes and get abused children to safety more quickly. But a higher percentage of children are abused again and they are more likely to be shuttled from one foster home to another.

Those who perform these thankless tasks are also paid precious little. Worse, the financial support for Pinellas, as measured per child, is 12 percent below the state average and 31 percent less than Manatee, Sarasota and DeSoto just to the south.

The per-child reimbursement can be misleading to the extent it tends to look higher in counties that succeed in moving children more quickly back to their homes or to adoption. The Florida Coalition of Children has offered legislators a sophisticated model - using such factors as population, children served, caseload and inflation - that could serve as the basis for a more equitable distribution of funds. Unfortunately, lawmakers have all but ignored it.

This much is clear: The current method of legislative appropriation is indefensible, and Pinellas children get the short end of the stick.

Many of the ingredients for a strong system of child protection already exist in Pinellas. The Juvenile Welfare Board, created in 1946, has provided a model for issues related to children. Former sheriff Everett Rice became one of the first in the state in 1999 to take over responsibility for all child-abuse investigations. Butterworth, a former state attorney general, is also quick to praise the Pinellas-Pasco state attorney's office and local judges for how well they have dealt with the criminal justice issues stemming from child abuse and neglect.

What remains, then, is for a community-based organization to take control of the day-to-day work of keeping children out of harm's way, of sometimes removing them from dangerous homes and finding people who can shelter them from harm. Butterworth calls this "a defining moment in time for community-based care." This is a chance for Pinellas to shine.

[Last modified November 9, 2007, 22:22:34]