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Awaiting sweeping changes, parents are left unsure where to turn for help.
By RYAN DAVIS
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 26, 2001
Second in a series of articles chronicling the privatization of the foster care system in Pasco County through the experiences of the Gary family.
Pam Gary looked around the courthouse. She figured her caseworker must be somewhere in the crowded hallway.
Gary is trying to adopt three of her eight foster kids. This March 6 hearing was another step toward becoming what they already call her: Mom.
But her state adoption caseworker was nowhere to be found. She skipped the hearing.
"I was pretty shocked," said Gary, 35. "There are little human beings attached to those names, and it really annoys me that it was not important enough for them to be there."
The caseworker's excuse: too much work, Gary said.
As the state nears the April 5 handoff of its remaining services for children of troubled families, it faces an exodus of workers who handled those cases.
In turn, the department has been letting cases -- each the ongoing saga of struggle for a child -- sit unattended, foster parents and officials said.
The changeover is a grand social service experiment. On April 5, Pasco will be the state's third county to have its array of services for these children transferred from the government to local agencies.
It's called community-based care, but here it's going to need to start with a grand clean-up.
Family Continuity Program, the St. Petersburg-based non-profit agency handling the majority of services in Pasco and Pinellas, will assume responsibility for 686 Pasco children who are in foster care or are waiting to be adopted or live in a potentially explosive family.
Some of the cases won't have been touched in weeks.
"Someone's going to have to come in and pick up the pieces," Gary said.
The question is, who?
Of the 30 people who will manage adoption and foster care cases, only 17 had been hired at the end of last week, Family Continuity officials said.
They said not to worry -- after a week of hiring, they will be ready.
"We're doing just fine," said spokeswoman Elaine Fulton-Jones.
But even if the positions are filled in time, the workers will require eight weeks of training before they can take on a partial caseload, which leaves the small staff with a heavy burden during the learning period, foster parents said.
Pam Gary mulls the future of foster care -- when she finds time.
She is the president of the Pasco Foster Parent Association, a primarily east Pasco group. She and her husband, 61-year-old Mike, both work full-time.
She's also a full-time student.
She, Mike, her two children from earlier marriages and the eight foster kids live on a spread north of Dade City, the rural calm absorbing playfulness and pouts from their crowded house.
Constant crises often block the view, but from her perch Pam Gary can see the positives she hopes will -- eventually -- result from the ongoing change.
When everyone is hired, Family Continuity officials said they will have three more Pasco caseworkers than the state had.
The agency also promises to create more community involvement in the plight of these children, many of whom were abused and neglected.
But for the kids, this is just another change.
Not one of Pam Gary's eight foster children will have the same caseworker, she said. For one 3-year-old, it will be his ninth caseworker. For her 17-year-old foster child, the news that she would lose her case worker caused her to cry. Her caseworker has had a pillow for a shoulder since her family was torn apart by a brutal crime.
Of the 30 people who will oversee children's cases, 16 will be state carryovers, Fulton-Jones said, but some will be very recent additions.
"The foster parent association and the foster parents," Gary said at the association's meeting this month, "are going to be the only continuity in Family Continuity for a while."
When Pam Gary told Judge Lynn Tepper on March 6 that her caseworker wasn't there, Tepper rolled her eyes.
Tepper, who handles the cases of troubled children in east Pasco, is fed up with the state's inaction.
"It has come to my attention that in light of the April (5) takeover by (Family Continuity), your adoption unit is currently receiving cases (and) taking no action," Tepper wrote in a March 13 memo to the Department of Children and Families. "This is unacceptable."
She added that at least three children are ready to be adopted but can't because state workers aren't responding.
Since the Family Continuity takeover was announced in September 1999, both Tepper and the foster parents have seen the department struggle to keep workers and keep up with the children. It came to a head this month, Tepper said.
Officially, 94 percent of the state's adoption/foster care supervisors and workers remain in their jobs, DCF spokesman Tom Jones said.
That number doesn't necessarily reflect filled desks and experience.
Some are new hires brought in to make the transition to Family Continuity.
Also, more than a third of the remaining workers will retire, transfer or quit shortly and might not actually be working. They could be using leftover vacation.
"Whether they're physically on the job, that I don't know," Jones said.
Because foster parents don't have the same legal rights as parents or guardians, when the Garys' 14-year-old needs to go out of state for Naval ROTC, Pam and Mike Gary must consult a caseworker.
Among other things, they also must get permission for many of the kids' medical needs.
"God forbid something should happen to one of the children. Who are we going to call?" Pam Gary asked. "Who is going to be there? Who is going to know enough to take care of these kids?"
The state insists it is prepared to handle any problems until April 5.
Fulton-Jones said Family Continuity will be prepared after that even if short-staffed.
The roughly 40 cases per worker is more than the Family Continuity target of 25 to 30, but it is better than the situation in some parts of Pinellas when the agency took over there.
Change breeds concern, she said. In the last year, Family Continuity has handled three similar changeovers in Pinellas.
"There's always this last-minute panic," she said. "We're really doing fine."
Family Continuity is in the process of determining how many children's cases have been held up by the state, Fulton-Jones said.
"We're just going to overcome that challenge with whatever we have to do," Fulton-Jones said. "We don't want folks waiting."
Pam Gary looks for her caseworker one more time.
And waits.
But Judge Tepper won't let the adoption cases, already more than 6 months old, drag any longer. She schedules the final adoption. If nothing goes wrong, on May 8 Gary will drop the "foster" from foster mom for three of her kids.
"Just talking about it brings tears to my eyes," she said. "We have been through so much with these kids."
-- Ryan Davis covers higher education and social services in Pasco. He can be reached at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 3452, or by e-mail at rdavis@sptimes.com.