by Brian J. Cabrey
Rilya Wilson, Latiana Hamilton, Jesse, Jordan, Joseph, Toby, Suzanna, Robbie. Have you heard any of these names before? Do you know who they are? One is missing, one is dead, and six were “lucky” enough to survive. One was abducted or killed, no one really knows. One was abused, tortured, and murdered. Six were brutally and inhumanely abused, neglected, and tortured. All were treated worse than animals.
Figured it out yet? Here’s a clue, all of them have been the subject of much media attention in the last few years. Still don’t know? Well, all have several more things in common. All of them are children. All of them were at one time placed in the Florida foster care system. Most troubling, however, is that all of them were abused and neglected while in Florida’s foster care system.
Children are being lost, hurt, even killed, at the hands
of the very people who are entrusted with their care, and often other children in the system. Child-on-child and caretaker-on-child abuse, both physical and sexual, are pervasive. Children are being overmedicated or medicated unnecessarily. Florida’s foster care system is in crisis.
There are an estimated 47,000 children in the custody of
the State of Florida Department of Children and Families. That
is up over the past four
years from approximately 18,000 statewide. At any given time, about 400 of those children
are missing and unaccounted
for. Many more are at risk
for mental, sexual, and physical abuse. For many, foster care
is a permanent way of life
and their social, educational, and mental health needs are ignored. Children’s advocates have been arguing for years against overmedication of children in
DCF custody. A recent study showed that more than half
of Florida’s foster children who were likely to have emotional problems were on at least
one psychotropic medication, perhaps unnecessarily. The
survey by the Florida Statewide Advocacy Council reviewed 1,180 children and found
that 55 percent, or 652 children, were on one or more such medications. Amazingly, 17 of the children were five-years-old or younger, four were two years old, and two were only one year old.
Once in the foster care system, many children stay longer than they should because the State cannot place them in a suitable adoptive home. Many children bounce from foster home to foster home or are placed in overcrowded foster homes as there are too few licensed foster homes, and even fewer quality ones. Often, caseworkers do not regularly visit the children in their charge. Remember little Rilya Wilson?
For other children, their stay in foster care is permanent until they age out, at which point they are often unceremoniously set free in the world of adults, where they are expected to behave as responsible and productive citizens. This despite the fact that few receive the necessary life skills and training to succeed in that regard. This despite the fact that many are sent out into the world with special medical and emotional needs, yet with little or no security net, and with no way of providing for those needs or the ability to do so by themselves. Not surprisingly, statistics show that many of these children become homeless and end up in shelters, mental health facilities, or even prison following their stay in Florida’s foster care system. A disproportionate number of inmates on Florida’s Death Row were foster children.
Lest you think that this is largely a problem elsewhere in the state, think again. Jacksonville and Northeast Florida are among the top areas in the state in terms of the number of children removed from their homes and placed in the State’s custody, as well as the number of children abused while they are there.
The Latiana Hamilton case, better known to some perhaps as the Lena Cumberbatch case, was a Jacksonville case. There are other cases pending locally and statewide. What has been reported in the media is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The crisis in Florida’s foster care system is the result of a systemic failure statewide.
Touted as a solution to the problem, we are now witnessing the “privatization” of the foster care system, effectively passing the burden of a failing system from DCF to well-intentioned private entities. There is no reason to believe that many if not all of the same problems which plagued the State, will also haunt the private groups (under-funding, under-staffing, inadequate number of quality foster homes, personnel competence and turnover, number of children in the system, etc.). In fact, to absorb the dramatic shift and increased caseload, many private groups have simply hired the displaced caseworkers formerly with DCF.
This problem has become a crisis, and is finally getting much needed and long overdue public attention, both legally and politically. With the possible exception of the debate over medical malpractice reform, perhaps no other issue has been more of a thorn in Gov. Bush’s side than this one.
Current Florida Bar President Miles McGrane and President-Elect Kelly Johnson have pledged themselves to children’s issues and are advocating that lawyers become involved, whether by volunteering their time and services, educating themselves and others, donating pro bono time and money to children’s advocacy groups, etc. The Jacksonville Bar Association will be sponsoring a CLE following the Oct. 16 luncheon, entitled Florida’s Foster Care Crisis-What Lawyers Can Do. It is to be part of the Florida Bar’s For The Children CLE series, and the first such seminar to be offered statewide. I encourage and invite anyone reading this to attend. Lawyers must educate themselves about this crisis and the public must be made aware of how dire things have become for the children in our midst, particularly those most vulnerable and at risk. As lawyers, we must respond and act to end this shameful state of affairs, to become part of the fix for a broken system. We must do it for the children.