Florida's failed past at root of current child welfare tragedy

By Richard Wexler
Posted: 7:26 p.m. Thursday, April 7, 2011
Palm Beach Post

A familiar ritual is unfolding in Florida. The horrifying death of Nubia Barahona, allegedly at the hands of her foster/adoptive father, and the near death of her brother Victor are "raising questions" about the Florida Department of Children and Families.

The obligatory "blue ribbon" commission met, and the appropriate hands were wrung. But the biggest problems lie in DCF's troubled past. That's why returning to those failed policies would be the worst mistake.

At the heart of the most recent tragedy is not the false claim that DCF does too much to preserve families now, but the fact that it did too little to keep families together before. Nubia and Victor were taken from their parents in 2004, when DCF still operated under the take-the-child-and-run mentality brought to the agency by its disgraced former secretary, Kathleen Kearney. In 1999, Ms. Kearney's first year, the number of children torn from parents soared 50 percent. Removals stayed at that high level through 2006. Instead of making children safer, deaths of children known to the system soared.

The hostility extended to extended families. So when loving relatives came forward to take in Nubia and Victor, DCF dismissed them in favor of total strangers - the Barahonas. FULL STORY