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Sarasota YMCA's State Contract May Go Out For Bid

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 1, 2007

TAMPA - The Sarasota Family YMCA likely will have to compete for a multimillion-dollar state contract next year to provide foster care and adoptions in Pinellas and Pasco counties.

'It's what we did not want,' Ed McBride, a senior manager with the YMCA's Safe Children's Coalition, told a community group Wednesday in Largo.

The YMCA received a state review this week that rapped the agency for its attitudes toward providers and foster parents and its overall performance, including overburdened caseworkers in Pinellas operating in 'crisis mode.'

Talk had centered on whether the YMCA, Florida's first agency to take on child-welfare duties when the state privatized those services, should continue its oversight of Pinellas and Pasco, or whether its state contract should go out for bid. The contract is worth $49 million this fiscal year.

Department of Children & Families Secretary Bob Butterworth plans to make that decision sometime early next week, said his safety director, George Sheldon. But word leaked Wednesday that the decision was made, leaving McBride to inform his staff and members of a community alliance group who were meeting in response to the state review.

McBride said the YMCA was encouraged to reapply for the contract.

Moments later, DCF Regional Director Nick Cox told the group a final decision was still pending.

'Obviously, this has been discussed,' Cox said.

Butterworth wants to study the review and talk to more people first, Cox said later.

What is a done deal, he said, is that reinforcements would be coming to Pinellas.

DCF administrator Alan Abramowitz, who led the successful reorganization of Palm Beach County's community-based care agency in July, will head a similar effort in Pinellas, Cox said.

'He's kind of our firefighter,' Sheldon added.

Abramowitz, who oversees Brevard and Seminole counties, has tapped Mark Jones of Neighbor to Family - a national organization with a chapter in Daytona Beach that promotes professional foster parents - to help Pinellas with its backlog of cases.
Abramowitz said workers from other community-based care agencies will tackle home studies that are required of each foster parent before children are placed in the home.

He does not want to pull cases from workers - that puts children three months behind in their progress, he said - but plans to focus on retaining workers and reducing caseloads that currently run as high as 40 children per worker.

'The key is caseworkers need to feel they're making a difference,' Abramowitz said.

News Channel 8 reporter Mark Douglas contributed to this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com.

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