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Law Is Fixed; Are Children Safer?

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 21, 2007

TAMPA - In July 2002, a new Florida law made lying about visiting children in state care a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

In the five years since, only seven people have been convicted.

That's because a loophole in the law made prosecution difficult; consequently, charges often were downgraded to misdemeanors.

A crime was committed if a worker altered, destroyed, overwrote or deleted an existing record. Nowhere, though, did the law mention that it was a crime to create the false record, which happens almost every time a worker lies about a visit.

But state officials say a little change in the statute is about to make a big difference.

A new law that took effect July 1 makes it 'very specific and very clear,' said Sheryl Steckler, the inspector general whose office investigates wrongdoing within the Department of Children & Families.

'If you do not see a child or an elderly person in state care, and you make a report that you did, it's a felony,' she said.

DCF's regional director, Nick Cox, a former assistant state attorney in Tampa who oversees 11 counties including Hillsborough County, said the change will be 'massive.'

'One or two words in a criminal statute can be night and day,' he said.

Other child welfare advocates prefer to wait and see. Was the problem really as simple as a badly worded law, or has the state been lax in its protection of children?

'At least now we're going to find out if, in fact, it was simply an excuse,' said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

'Plight Of Children Remains'

Wexler's Virginia-based agency has spent years tracking child welfare in Florida and across the nation. He said Florida may end up with fewer records falsified, but what will change the real problem - that state caseworkers have too many children to oversee?

'A few children will benefit,' he predicted. 'But the plight of children remains.'
Don Dixon of The Children's Board of Hillsborough County agrees.

'It will make a big difference in the number of prosecutions,' said Dixon, an assistant executive director with the board and a former DCF administrator. 'But I'm not sure it's going to be a deterrent.'

The reason behind the small number of convictions probably is that for most workers accused of falsifying records, this is their first offense, said Andrea Moore, an attorney and executive director of Florida's Children First in Tallahassee.

'The bigger issue is getting them fired, anyhow,' she said. 'DCF didn't used to fire people. Now they do.'

In an annual report released last month by the Inspector General's Office, 42 state employees and private contractors were investigated between June 30, 2006, and July 1 for falsifying records, computer misconduct, fraud and theft, among other allegations.

7 Prosecuted, 1 Jailed

Nine workers were charged; seven were prosecuted. All but one - sentenced to 20 months in jail for creating fictitious applicants for an emergency assistance program in Tallahassee - received probation or pretrial intervention, which avoids a criminal conviction. Nineteen cases are pending legal action.

More than half the violations involved falsifying records, the report showed.

Two recent cases in Hillsborough County didn't make it into this year's inspector general's report, but Steckler said they will be part of next year's analysis.

Robin Melissa Schofield of Tampa was fired from The Children's Home in March of 2006 after two months on the job.

The caseworker couldn't show supervisors proof she had visited two clients, but later created documents that showed she had.

But Schofield's time sheets showed she wasn't working on the days she said she had visited other clients and she didn't submit mileage forms for travel.

Tampa police arrested Schofield in April and charged her with two counts of falsifying records.

In June, the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office accepted Schofield in a pretrial intervention program that calls for monthly reports to a probation officer and 50 hours of community service to be completed within 18 months.

Margaret O'Rourke Haq, also of Tampa, received a similar pretrial deal in August that ends in nine months.

Haq worked for The Children's Home from May 2002 to April 2006, when she was accused of lying about visitations and fired.

Tampa police charged her with one count of falsifying records. Haq, 52, said she had visited a boy in her care, but the boy was in juvenile detention at the time.

Haq told The Tampa Tribune in April that she was fired because she spoke out against a supervisor.

She also said that she had 50 cases at a time and an impossible mandate to see every child at least once a month.

Haq soon went to work for another child welfare agency in Pinellas County, where she was again accused of falsifying records and fired.
Assistant State Attorney Wayne Chalu, who handled both cases in Tampa, said he referred the two caseworkers for pretrial intervention because they didn't have prior criminal records and none of the children involved were harmed.

'If the child had been harmed, all bets are off,' he said.

He agrees the original wording of the law hurt prosecution of such cases.

'Now, with the statute amended, it definitely does plug that hole,' Chalu said.

Even though those cases didn't result in jail time, social service leaders say they are sending a message to child welfare workers everywhere: lying won't be tolerated.

'We take it very seriously,' said Jeff Rainey, chief executive officer of Hillsborough Kids Inc., the private agency in Tampa that oversees local foster care and adoption for the state.

Hillsborough Kids contracts with The Children's Home and five other providers of case management services.

After the recent cases in Tampa came to light, Rainey's agency asked the Inspector General's Office to help train workers on catching false records. Caregivers now get a copy immediately of a signed visitation form, and supervisors will follow up with telephone calls, he said.
Caseworkers also will have mentors to talk with to make sure they are not overwhelmed.

'We're not using scare tactics,' he said. 'We want to equip the case managers with enough training and information so they don't feel like the need to falsify.'

Senior researcher Buddy Jaudon contributed to this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com.

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