Child welfare agency gets new chief

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 3, 2001

TAMPA -- Chris Card, an influential social worker who has tried to transform how Florida deals with abused and neglected children, has been named to run a key child welfare agency in Hillsborough County.

Card has been selected as executive director of Hillsborough Kids, the nonprofit agency that intends to begin overseeing foster care, adoptions and counseling for parents who have abused or neglected their children.

He now leads an agency that does similar work in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

"What I saw in Hillsborough is the same kind of commitment and mission-driven people that really want to improve the quality of the child welfare system," Card said Tuesday. "I just got real excited about doing it in such a bigger community."

Charlie Ketchey, chairman of Hillsborough Kids board, said a formal contract has not yet been signed, but that Card was the board's choice.

"He has plenty of experience at this, probably more experience in privatization of children's services than anybody in the state," Ketchey said. "He has been involved in the trenches, to the upper level of management."

Card has been on the cutting edge of a philosophy that is markedly changing the Department of Children and Families, formerly known as Health and Rehabilitative Services.

Under this change, promoted by Gov. Jeb Bush and DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney, almost all of state government's child welfare functions will be "privatized," or contracted to nonprofit groups.

This means that the worker who licenses a foster home or works to reunite abused children with their families will likely to be an employee of a nonprofit agency, instead of a government worker for DCF. The theory is that these organizations can gain more community support and therefore work more effectively.

In Pinellas and Pasco counties, a nonprofit company called Family Continuity has taken over much of the child welfare work from the DCF. The agency that Card leads, Sarasota-based YMCA Children, Youth and Family Services, now is cited as a statewide model.

He will continue working in Sarasota and Manatee counties during a transition period, and come to Tampa full time in November.

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