Agency will review all open child abuse cases

Although they don't officially take over the supervision of child abuse cases in Hillsborough County until July 1, Eckerd officials announced a plan Tuesday to send in teams of experts immediately to pore over every open case in the county — more than 1,500 of them — looking for errors and ways to improve child safety.

Last month, Eckerd was chosen to replace longtime lead agency Hillsborough Kids Inc., which has been criticized for having the highest number of child abuse deaths statewide. From 2009 to the present, nine children died while under the watch of HKI and its subcontracted agencies.

By contrast, Eckerd, currently the lead agency in Pasco and Pinellas counties, was in charge when two children died, one in 2008 and one in 2010.

"We wanted to get our arms around the cases in Hillsborough County as soon as possible," said Lorita Shirley, Eckerd's newly appointed executive director in Hillsborough. Previously, she served in the same role for Eckerd in Pinellas and Polk counties.

The investigative teams include experienced child abuse investigators, medical personnel, mental health specialists and experts in substance abuse, she said.

They will start with the families most at risk: young single parents with children younger than 6, as well as parents with chronic substance abuse issues and a history of violence.

It's the first step toward stabilizing what, said Mike Carroll, regional director for the Department of Children & Families, is the state's most complicated and confusing delivery system of child welfare services.

David Dennis, president and chief executive officer of Clearwater-based Eckerd, said the privately funded nonprofit agency plans other changes as well.

Among them is a plan to upgrade the quality of the frontline workers charged with recognizing dangerous situations for children and doing what is needed to protect them.

The first step is recruiting the right people and paying them according to the difficulty of the job, he said. Second, workers will receive seven weeks of training and a slow introduction to cases.

"These are people who come in wanting to help children but they become overwhelmed," Dennis said.

Eckerd requires follow-up meetings with new hires at 30 days with their supervisors, at 75 days with human resources and a third meeting after 100 days on the job with their supervisor's boss.

"It's a way for us to know if they're doing OK, feeling confident and using the right judgment," he said.

Eckerd also offers to pay for employees with bachelor's degrees to receive a master's in social work. Caseloads also will be decreased, meaning case managers would be responsible for no more than 18 children at a time. The ideal, according to the Child Welfare League of America, is 12.

The goal is to slow the turnover rate of 40 percent per year; most workers last just short of three years before quitting, said DCF Secretary David Wilkins. Inexperienced workers are the most likely to make mistakes in a field in which experience is critical to saving lives.

Wilkins said that Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of the discovery of the body of Nubia Barahona, the adopted daughter of a couple who authorities say beat the girl to death and stuffed her body in a plastic bag. Her battered twin brother was found in a truck along Interstate 95 in Palm Beach County.

"When I went through that tragedy last year, it became apparent that we needed to make radical changes," Wilkins said. "We're asking for more money for child abuse investigations. The case managers feel overworked and underappreciated. We have to change the way they do their jobs."

Shirley said Eckerd, which was begun in 1968, offers a model that has been effective.

"We have 43 years of stability with a corporate infrastructure that allows us to know how to do the job better," she said.

Over the next four months, Eckerd will conduct community meetings in Hillsborough County, beginning in neighborhoods in which the highest numbers of children have been removed from their homes because of abuse and neglect. Priority will be given to ZIP codes 33612, 33613 and 33610.

The first community forum will be at 6:30 p.m. March 6 at the College Hill Church of God in Christ, 6410 30th St., Tampa.

For information, go to www.eckerd.org/hillsborough.