Advertisement

Editorial: State, nonprofits share obligation to help Hillsborough's foster kids

 
DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD   |   Times "Bags of hope" given to foster children are filled with socks and underwear and other essentials to meet their emergency needs.
DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times "Bags of hope" given to foster children are filled with socks and underwear and other essentials to meet their emergency needs.
Published June 14, 2018

The Florida Department of Children and Families has correctly set a quick deadline for Hillsborough County's main child welfare provider to correct its foster care program. For too long the same story has played out, where troubled teens who need foster care cannot get it, cycling them through more turmoil during a formative stage of their lives. The state and Eckerd Connects, the lead local provider, need to work together quickly to strengthen the safety net and ensure that Hillsborough has adequate resources to meet its special needs.

DCF released reports this week by its inspector general's office and by a special team examining the problems in Hillsborough that both show maddening gaps in the child protection system. Foster children often don't know until late in the evening where they will bed down for the night. Foster parents want them out early the next morning. Dozens live this "chaotic and transient lifestyle," the peer review team found, as group homes refuse to accept the most troubled teens and as those teens themselves rebel from being moved from place to place each night, where some are too tired, poorly fed or ashamed of their dirty clothes or hygiene to attend school.

The findings are no surprise for a system that is chronically underfunded and in a county where many players — public and private — have a part. But the report, in response to multiple reports in the past two years of children either sleeping in inappropriate places or being left unattended, paints a chilling picture of how this mistreatment is further fueling a sense of failure and alienation in the most vulnerable children in Florida.

Children bouncing from home to home each night are living with uncertainty, "tired of trying to fit in." Some fear being made fun of or picked on. They don't trust adults. As one teen said: "There's no point in planning my life when I don't know what my next day will look like." Some end up refusing placements, opting instead to spend the night with a social worker ("My case manager is my only family") in a parking lot outside a Wawa store ("the more popular choice because they had Wi-Fi"). This is hardly an environment for success or a track to raising healthy families of their own.

Eckerd says it already has acted on the recommendations. It is providing new placement services, more case managers and other efforts to better serve and track hard-to-place teens. That extra effort is needed in Hillsborough, where the rate of children in out-of-home care has steadily increased in recent years and which ranks higher than the state and national averages.

Eckerd and DCF also need to jointly take responsibility of a child welfare system that Florida has largely privatized over time. Eckerd has internal problems it needs to fix, but the state also needs to provide Hillsborough the money needed to meet its unique and acute crisis. Eckerd chief Chris Card said Thursday his agency embraced the findings and that "we're going to make a case for more funding." The reforms and the financing go hand-in-hand, and Eckerd and the state should work together to put their vital mission on firmer ground.