DCF policy shift aims to keep families together

Secretary Jerry Regier would take fewer children from abusive situations and reduce the load on case workers.

By CURTIS KRUEGER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 7, 2003

In a stark change of philosophy, Florida's social services director said Thursday the state should put new emphasis on keeping families together and remove fewer children from parents accused of abuse or neglect.

Department of Children and Families Secretary Jerry Regier, departing from the approach of his predecessor, has proposed redesigning his agency to:

Reduce the number of children in foster care by about 25 percent, from about 33,000 to 25,000.

Change the criteria for which abuse calls require an immediate investigation, assuming the Legislature agrees.

Bolster programs designed to strengthen families and help them avoid losing their children into foster care.

"I think it is a philosophical shift. I think clearly what we saw in the previous administration was more of an emphasis on removal," Regier said during a telephone news conference Thursday.

Regier says the state should work harder at getting help for families accused of abuse and neglect, by providing substance abuse and mental health counseling, mentoring and even such basics as parenting programs.

If these families can overcome problems and provide a safe home for their children, it would prove "cheaper, No. 1, and No. 2, better for the children. Many of these kids that are removed would certainly like to stay in their homes if they could."

Counseling and parenting programs are available right now, but Regier said he would expand such programs and give them new emphasis. Among his plans: Giving as much as $5-million for faith-based prevention programs.

"What Regier is saying is that the days of take the child and run are over," said Richard Wexler, of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, an advocacy group that has been pushing for such an approach. He said "DCF now understands that family preservation and child safety are not at odds."

But some observers say the missing piece in the plan is money.

"We do need to give much greater attention to supporting families and reducing the number of children that are removed from families," said Ed Feaver, a former DCF secretary who now works for the University of South Florida's Lawton and Rhea Chiles for Healthy Mothers and Babies. "But follow the money. The issue's going to really be, are we seriously going to for the first time ever ... invest in truly comprehensive family support programs?"

"Where are we going to find the money?" said Jack Levine, president of Voices for Florida's Children, an advocacy group.

Regier's prevention emphasis isn't the only thing that will cost DCF money.

He also has set an ambitious goal of reducing child welfare workers' caseloads workers to 15, a benchmark that depends heavily on cash the state does not appear to have. Regier's initial request for a $473-million budget increase has been cut to $255-million by the Bush administration, and could be cut further by the Legislature.

Reducing caseloads so far has eluded other DCF secretaries for decades. A spot check of DCF districts around the state turned up caseloads as low as 15 and as high as 48 per worker; in some extreme cases in the past, they have exceeded 100 per worker.

Gov. Jeb Bush last year chose Regier to replace Kathleen Kearney, a former judge who was considered an advocate of "family safety," the philosophy that favors protecting children even when it means removing them from their home.

Regier insisted his reforms would be implemented "without lowering any standard of safety." Children still would be removed from dangerously abusive and neglectful parents.

But his plan for changing which calls to Florida's abuse hotline merit investigation will get careful scrutiny. As recently as 1999, the Florida Legislature expanded the number of allegations that prompt mandatory abuse investigations, upset over DCF's failure to catch obvious signs of abuse in a 6-year-old Lake County girl who was killed by her father.

Regier says some requirements could be relaxed. Under the current system, if a girl in foster care tells a counselor she was abused three years earlier by her family, the counselor would be required to call the abuse hotline, even if the girl was no longer in immediate danger. "It seems to me that we could come up with some other way of approaching that," he said.

He offered few other details Thursday about how the hotline criteria might change, or how he planned to make sure these changes don't put children at risk.

"That's the challenge," he said. "But in the work of caseworkers, you always have that balance between making those decisions."

Adding to the sense of impending change in the agency, Regier wants to speed up the department's move to contract out most of its child welfare work. In Pinellas and Pasco counties, for example, a nonprofit agency called Family Continuity Program supervises foster care and sheriff's employees conduct child abuse investigations.

Regier wants a similar transition across the state, and wants it to begin at least six months faster than previously anticipated.

-- Curtis Krueger can be reached at (727) 893-8232 or at krueger@sptimes.com.

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