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DCF Panel Urges More Teamwork, Training

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 3, 2007

TAMPA - Training law enforcement and child welfare authorities to better work together and changing laws to ensure that reporting missing children is a top priority are among recommendations released Friday by a task force on child protection.

The 13-member panel unveiled its final report designed to help fix Florida's social service system during a public hearing Friday afternoon in Fort Myers.

Department of Children & Families Secretary Bob Butterworth created the panel in July after a Pinellas County case in which a toddler went missing for nine months.

The report calls for increased monitoring of private agencies that provide child welfare services for the state, including reviewing contracts, and continued task force meetings to ensure DCF follows its own rules.

The panel is also reviewing DCF policies that include allowing family friends to become caregivers of children removed from their homes. These situations, known as nonrelative care, are essentially unlicensed foster homes, critics say, that receive little oversight and support.

The panel will study the possibility of getting such caregivers to eventually become licensed foster parents, which would provide them with better training, more in-house services and possibly more financial help by way of a monthly state stipend.

Other recommendations include standardizing laws that require background screenings of caregivers, whether relatives, nonrelatives or foster parents, and training law enforcement agencies to file missing person reports over the telephone to get the word out faster.

The panel, which plans to continue meeting statewide throughout 2008, also will make time to listen to concerns from the public.

"That's the part I really enjoy," said panel member Alan Abramowitz, a DCF administrator tapped to help Pinellas County get its services up to par. "It's so valuable for us to hear those stories."

Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at sackerman@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7144.

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