A report by the state Department of Children and Families on the death of a 3-year-old Hollywood boy is prompting talk among policymakers about the next steps in fixing Florida’s troubled child-protection system.
The report — by what is known as the Critical Incident Rapid Response Team — details a system-wide breakdown in protecting Ahziya Osceola, whose body was found March 19, hidden in the laundry room of his family’s home.
“Collection and sharing of information and evidence occurred in ‘silo’ fashion and was both inconsistent and insufficient” among a variety of agencies, the report concluded.
Those agencies included the Broward Sheriff’s Office; ChildNet, a community-based care organization; the Office of the Attorney General, which provides children’s legal services in Broward County; a child protection team administered by Broward’s Human Services Department; and the Seminole Tribe, which included the boy.
The boy’s injuries included blows to the abdomen that smashed his liver and pancreas, multiple bruises and a broken leg.
His stepmother faces charges of aggravated manslaughter and giving false information to law enforcement about his disappearance. His father has been charged with child neglect.
The Critical Incident Rapid Response Team, or CIRRT, report, which was released last week, said Ahziya had been the subject of four child-protective investigations, none of which found him to be at risk in his father’s home despite a pattern of bruising, reports to the state abuse hotline and his stepmother’s previous history of child maltreatment.
Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a Hollywood Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee, said the boy was “beaten to death.”
Even before the CIRRT report was out, Sobel said during an April 9 committee meeting that she wanted to review the state’s child-welfare arrangements with the Seminole Tribe, to which the boy and his family belonged. Seminole Family Services had been handling Ahziya’s case jointly with ChildNet, the lead community-based care agency in the region.
After ChildNet terminated services to the boy in September, Seminole Family Services alone handled his case.
Although Ahziya’s death occurred in a home on state land and not on tribal property, the question of Seminole sovereignty complicates any potential solution.
Carroll said Friday he would reach out to the Seminoles “directly.”
Seminoles spokesman Gary Bitner said the tribe is reviewing the CIRRT report.