Florida Changes Lead Child Welfare Agency UPDATED

Same subcontractors, different administrators. Not holding breath that positive changes will occur here.

“David Wilkins, state secretary for the Department of Children & Families, has accepted a committee’s recommendation to replace Hillsborough Kids Inc. as the lead agency for child welfare services.

Tuesday, a 10-member group of community members unanimously selected Eckerd Community Alternatives to take HKI’s place. Eckerd already is the lead agency for Pinellas and Pasco counties, and has a better track record than HKI on such measures as the number of deaths of children under its care, the cost of care per child and the outcomes of intervention.

Eckerd will continue to work with the same subcontracted agencies used by HKI to allow for continuation of services and for seamless reimbursement for foster families, adoptions and child welfare management.”

Hillsborough Kids Inc. loses contract
[Tampa Bay Online 1/7/12 by  Donna Koehn]

HKI had a “$65.5 million annual contract that would allow Hillsborough Kids Inc. to continue providing services to about 2,800 abused and neglected children and teenagers for the next five years. It has held the contract for more than 10 years.”

“No one on a committee formed to make the recommendation specifically cited the children’s deaths in making the switch to Eckerd, already the lead agency for child welfare services in Pinellas and Pasco counties. Only Eckerd and HKI vied for the lucrative contract.

“I selected Eckerd due to its demonstration of being a dynamic leader,” said Walter Sachs, contract specialist with the Department of Children & Families, at Tuesday’s committee meeting. “It just has a getting-better-all-the-time mentality.””

“Hillsborough County’s system of child welfare services is the most complicated in the country, said Mike Carroll, DCF’s regional director.

Here, the attorney general handles legal matters, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office investigates allegations of abuse and neglect, and HKI, which has caseworkers contracted by DCF, provides monitoring and counseling to families. HKI oversees a network of providers, considered subcontractors, that includes Mental Health Care Inc., Children’s Home Society, Gulf Coast Community Care and several others.” [Good that the law enforcement investigates allegations instead of social workers. They better keep that part.]

Deaths under HKI

“One of the most disturbing child deaths occurred under HKI’s watch in May 2009, when a 17-year-old mother’s boyfriend, Richard McTear Jr. threw her infant son onto Interstate 275. Caseworkers had encouraged the man, who had a history of domestic violence, to help the teenager care for the baby.
McTear is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Emanuel Wesley Murray.

“We dropped the ball,” Jeff Rainey, president and chief executive officer of HKI, said at the time.

In 2011, three agencies were involved with the family of Ronderique Anderson, a 16-month-old who died after his father was given custody of him. The man said he threw the baby as punishment, hitting the boy’s head on a piece of furniture, resulting in his death.

Also last year, a man previously accused of beating a toddler to death was charged in the abuse of the boy’s sister. A judge had barred the man from his girlfriend’s home, but he continued to live there with the knowledge of caseworkers.”

“Eckerd, which began 40 years ago, has offices and facilities in seven states, including Texas, Louisiana, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire. It serves about 11,000 children and families each year. Eckerd Academy in Brooksville, a residential treatment center for at-risk boys ages 10 to 17, is one of 30 privately and publicly funded services nationwide.

April Putzulu, Eckerd spokeswoman, said the transition process in Hillsborough will take about six months.

Even with the switch to Eckerd, familiar faces will continue to provide services, said DCF’s Carroll.

“The change will be seamless for clients,” he said. “The subcontractors will stay the same.””

Hillsborough Kids Inc. likely to lose $65.5 million annual contract
[Tampa Bay Online 1/3/12 by  Donna Koehn/The Tampa Tribune]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Will there be new processes and training for the subcontractors? Monitoring clients has been disastrous in the past. Will the new state recommendations be enough to overcome the current deficits in the system?

Update: “Over the last four years, the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County has awarded $176,170 in no-bid contracts to the Florida Mental Health Institute.

The contracts, which cover specialized training sessions for case workers, aren’t the only ties binding the two agencies:

• The Children’s Board executive whose subordinate handles the contracts is the partner of the institute’s training director.

• The institute’s primary trainer is married to the building supervisor for the Children’s Board.

• High-ranking Children’s Board employees — including CEO Luanne Panacek — used to work for the institute.

Children’s Board officials have an explanation for awarding the sole-source contract to Florida Mental Health Institute, which is part of the University of South Florida:

It’s the only game in town.

“It’s still the closest and most reasonable to afford,” Panacek said.

It’s unclear how officials can be so certain. The board never put the training project out to bid.

Despite a written policy on sole-source contracts that requires the agency obtain annual price quotes from other potential vendors, spokesman Dan Casseday acknowledged Wednesday that officials had failed to do so for at least two years. The Children’s Board could not produce evidence of ever receiving quotes.

This is public money. The Children’s Board was created by voters almost 25 years ago. Nearly $30 million in property taxes raised last year was used primarily to finance nonprofit agencies that provide services to children. The board oversees that grant money.

The Children’s Board has provided a variety of training seminars to caseworkers since 1998. The sole-source contract with the USF institute stems from a 2000 program, for which the Children’s Board was lead agency, that used a state grant to implement a “family conferencing model.”

That model requires caseworkers take specific steps to help stabilize at-risk families. Under the contracts, a half-day session costs $600, a full-day session $1,200.

In 2008, retired Children’s Board employee Jim Robinson provided that training. His 10-month contract was worth up to $49,500.

But Robinson couldn’t carry out the contract, so the Children’s Board turned to the group that trained him, the Florida Mental Health Institute.

In August 2008, the Children’s Board signed a no-bid contract with the institute for up to $10,000.

Three months later, Laurie Bettinghaus, the Children’s Board’s chief learning officer, sent Panacek a note.

She wrote she had “what could potentially be perceived as conflict of interest” regarding the upcoming contract with the USF program. “Because of this,” she wrote, “I will not participate in oversight of this contract.”

Bettinghaus, who currently makes $127,338 a year, didn’t elaborate, but her potential conflict was this: The training consortium’s director is Laurie Cunningham, her longtime partner, with whom she owns a home.

Panacek said Bettinghaus doesn’t touch the contract, even though the manager who does reports directly to Bettinghaus. She said it’s not a complicated contract: Either the institute offers the classes or it doesn’t.

“I don’t think there are issues, that’s the point,” Panacek said. “If there was an issue, I’d be hearing about it. This is just one of the most straightforward, easy-to-monitor things there is.”

The current yearly contract is for up to $36,000. In previous years, the contracts were worth $40,800, $59,622 and $39,748.

Cunningham declined to comment about a potential conflict of interest. She said her program is unique in that it has a curriculum to train not only case workers but also trainers. She said it has provided training to child protection agencies around the state.

Hillsborough Kids Inc., the county’s lead child protection agency until July, requires case managers with its subcontractors — such as Camelot Community Care or Gulf Coast Jewish Family & Community Services — receive some type of family-based training, said spokeswoman Jeanine Bedell.

Those individual agencies decided how to pursue the training, which doesn’t necessarily have to be the same “family conferencing” model. Many of them decide to go through the Children’s Board, she said.

Children’s Board officials had a hard time explaining why their agency must offer the USF institute-run classes, or why its own staff can’t teach the classes. Part of the curriculum, for instance, is based on original content created by the Children’s Board — but still taught by USF staff.

Panacek initially said a federal grant required the Children’s Board offer the sessions. She later released a three-page history of the agency’s training programs that tied the sole contract to another program.

In an interview this week, she expressed frustration at the question. “I don’t think you really want to understand this,” she said.

The Children’s Board’s counterpart across the bay, the Pinellas Juvenile Welfare Board, once had its own training center for case workers. But as tax revenue decreased, the agency sharpened its focus and eliminated it, said spokesman Ben Kirby.

Kirby said the Pinellas agency did see a need to offer some classes for agency caseworkers, so it hired a trainer from the Florida Mental Health Institute last year to conduct a handful of seminars for case workers. It ended up costing the board around $5,000.

He said hunting for a qualified trainer outside that USF program would be difficult.

“All the stuff is already there,” he said.

At the Hillsborough Children’s Board, several members of its board of directors said they didn’t know anything about the sole- source contract. One of them, Pete Edwards, a critic of Panacek, said he wanted more information.

“It does seem strange. You think they’d tell the board, ‘Hey, we have these issues and our lawyer has determined it’s not a conflict,’ ” he said. “I’ve learned the hard way that the administration has had this thing for a long time and they don’t want you to ask anything about operations and procedures.”

Hillsborough children’s board has ties to agency with no-bid contract

[Tampa Bay Times 4/4/12 by Jodie Tillman]

Update 2: On July 1, 2012, Lorita Shirley of  Eckerd Community Alternatives/Hillsborough will take over the reins from Hillsborough Kids, Inc, who had 9 children die in their care in the past 2 years.

“In eight of the nine child deaths in the past two years, the children had been transferred from state custody, where they were safe, back to their families, where they fell back into danger. The subsequent increase in sheltered children may mean that investigators are now erring on the side of caution.

If the trend continues, it would place an extra 300 children in the foster care system by the end of the year — each child costing from $12,000 to $100,000”

“To avert more tragedy, Shirley set out to review cases of every Hillsborough child under state supervision before July 1. It caused a stir among the six agencies that currently monitor homes for Hillsborough Kids. Many believed caseworkers would be fired.

None have been, Shirley said. Case managers were told in advance what would be expected. Gaps were closed before cases reached reviewers.

Recently, Eckerd completed reviews of 280 of the highest-risk cases — children under 5, living at home with a parent. “Safety concerns were addressed,” she said, “but no children were removed.”

But Eckerd did find “no rhyme or reason” for how cases are assigned. A new caseworker just out of college could randomly end up with one of the county’s most complex or potentially dangerous cases. Shirley wants those cases assigned to the most experienced workers.

Last year, Hillsborough Kids altered contracts for two of the subcontractors — Mental Health Care Inc. and Children’s Home Society — each cited for mistakes in a child’s death.

Shirley has promised to assign her own staff to audit Hillsborough’s highest-risk cases: those children under 5.

“There’s a lot of oversight, a lot of file audits, more than what the state requires,” said Suzanne Parker, program director for Hills­borough’s Guardian ad Litem volunteers. She served on the selection committee that recommended Eckerd’s takeover.

Shirley promises parents that everything will be the same when Eckerd takes over on July 1. She won’t say, though, that everything will be the same six months down the road.

A lot depends, she says, on more analysis of the recent reviews.

“If an agency is doing poor work, it’s going to come out.”

Hillsborough’s new child protection director readies for July 1 takeover

[Tampa Bay Times 6/17/12 by John Barry]