More than 70 caseworkers lied about efforts to protect childrenFlorida child-welfare employees put kids at risk, records show -- some cite staggering caseloadsDuring the past two years, more than 70 Florida child-welfare workers have been caught falsifying records -- lying about their on-the-job efforts to protect children, according to state and county records reviewed by the
Orlando Sentinel.As a consequence, the Florida Department of Children and Families temporarily lost track of at least six children, sometimes for months. Fourteen children were left in unsafe homes, the
Sentinel found in a review of agency records.
Despite passage of a state law intended to punish cheaters, dishonest caseworkers remain a persistent problem in Florida's system to protect at-risk children:
•The day after a caseworker reported that she had inspected a foster home in Wildwood, police found its four foster children living in tents in the yard. The house had no running water, no food and no clean clothes.
•After a Hardee County social worker lied about making home visits, one child wound up living with an uncle awaiting trial on child-rape charges.Few workers end up punished, however, beyond losing their jobs.
Child advocates said they were not surprised by the cheating.
The cases identified by the
Sentinelare most likely "the tip of the iceberg," said Gerard Glynn, a law professor at the
Barry University law school in Orlando. He runs a legal clinic that represents children, many of them DCF clients.
"I'm happy they don't sweep this under the rug and hide the facts," he said, "but it still means the system is failing these children, and one failure is too many."
•Two children in Hernando County lived, for a time, with a grandfather who had been arrested two years earlier and accused of physically abusing his own child.
No child was hurt or killed because of phony paperwork, DCF said. But an investigation into the 2007 death of a neglected Jacksonville newborn revealed that his caseworker had falsified records in four other cases.
Once they were questioned about false records, workers time and again complained that they had been assigned too many children to watch, records show.
DCF Secretary George Sheldon, a former lawmaker who has run the agency since last year, said he has no sympathy for workers who lie.
"If you're overworked and can't get to cases, go to your supervisor and say that, but don't say you made the visit when you didn't make the visit," Sheldon said. "If you falsify, you're not going to get away with it, and there's going to be a cost to doing it."
The agency's Office of Inspector General, its internal watchdog, investigated most of the falsification cases reviewed by the
Sentinel and provided data and reports about them. The agency watches for employees who dummy up reports, fires most of them and hands over information to state attorneys for prosecution, DCF officials say.
A child's death is not enough for calling for a reformation of the Child Welfare System? Please help in getting the word out!!!
