FL - Bryce Barros, 23 mos, beaten to death, Broward County, 3 July 2009

LogicalMinds

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Florida's DCF messes up again...and another child dies

this ties in with the info that we recently learned that so many calls are totally shelved and ignored....what a mess. Apparently not even a JUDGE can get DCF to "move" and act

DCF ignored case of baby who later died
A Broward Circuit judge sought state intervention repeatedly for a vulnerable baby. But help for Bryce Barros came too late.


BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

For six months, Broward Circuit Judge Eileen O'Connor had been struggling to referee Alberto and Jocelyn Barros' nightmare of a marriage.

A former federal prosecutor who presides in the county's specialized Domestic Violence Court, she knew all too well how badly such things can end.

But O'Connor was less worried about the warring adults than their infant son Bryce, whom she feared might well become collateral damage. Three times in February and March, she faxed the state's child-abuse hot line: ``The court is deeply concerned about the welfare of the minor child.''

Child welfare administrators finally accepted the case on July 3. By then, Bryce Barros was dead. He was just shy of 2.


http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/1163407.html?storylink=mirelated



Thousands of abuse reports to a DCF hot line go unheeded every month because of a new screening process intended to keep the strained system functioning.

A finding of the joint review: About 46 percent of the cases studied by the two administrators -- BSO's James Walker and DCF's Kimberly Welles -- ultimately were phoned back to the hot line by BSO investigators who concluded the children remained at risk, said Riordan, a DCF spokesman in Broward.

Statewide, Abramowitz said, about 6 percent of prevention referrals are phoned back to the hot line.


the rest of the article is here...
http://www.miamiherald.com/569/story/1356292-p3.html

the "new system" means they just ignore a lot of the calls due to budget cuts
 
I just dont understand the fax when DCF people are in her court all the time,I cant understand why she didnt speak directly with them. At least she tried to get their attention but if a judge cannot get a child help how the hell are the rest of us?
 
And a step-grandmother in Oregon wondered why her calls went unanswered and the child died. This is awful. Why is it that about every 10-15 years, DHS has to reinvent themselves? Isn't there best practice? Aren't there working models? Yes, stressors change but humans are humans and common sense is common sense.

I understand modifications due to societal change but it's almost like they throw it all out once a decade, start over, and go down the slippery slope again. We teach children how to read. The kids change and the pressures change but the reading methods still work. Why doesn't social work....work????
 
Yes Miz...our DCF went a drastic overhaul due to the Rilya Wilson case.....for 15 months Rilya's check was cashed by her abusers, and the home was never visited

the social worker fudged the reports....she was getting her nails done, shopping in malls, having lunches and even "afternoon delight" with her boyfriend

we then learned that DCF had given that poor little girl to a woman who was NOT a blood relation at all (as they first said, not her grandmother)....whose female lover was mentally ill and violent and abusive....they were cashing her checks for over a year while she was dead

then...a big shakeup and investigation..we found that Florida's DCF had over 600 kids they had "lost" in the system and could not account for

a few years later they bragged they were down to "about 100"

we had a big shakeup....director fired...14 supervisors fired...a new law that it is a felony for them to "fudge" reports...

and then we have this....apparently they don't have to fudge and lie about reports cause they are NOT even investigating cases or making reports in the first place
 
Is our mikeymommom from the state of Florida ? She also is experiencing nothing but frustration with the DCF office ??

My god this is all so scarey !!
 
Any time social workers carry caseloads of 30-45 cases, children are going to suffer. IMO, this country has NEVER supported child welfare sufficiently nor followed up with tight fiscal oversight. I've worked "within" this system for over 20 years and the rules and regulations are constantly evolving. Right now, Oregon is seriously cutting foster care payments to many raising special needs kids. Now that makes sense.

Concurrent planning (working concurrently to reunify a child while still working to prepare them for adoption) was a landmark change. It cut years off of the practice of allowing children to languish while their bio-families often made only minimal attempts at change. However, even that is changing. Dependency judges are allowing that regulation to slide as we spend more and more time and money on trying to educate parents with addictions, mental illness, and criminal histories how to parent. The Inter-jurisdictional Placement Act (encouraging placing kids anywhere--not just in their home states) and the Multi-cultural Placement Act (removing barriers to adoption based on race) were also highly helpful. We make a little progress and then backslide into the abyss.

Does our society not grasp that we only get one go round with raising kids? Those that we don't reach, end up with their own threads on WS.
 
I can't find any real info about Bryce... His name is mentioned in passing in many lists of "CHILDREN DFC HAS FAILED!!" but I can't find out what he died from or if anyone was ever held responsible.

The only thing I've found about his cause of death so far is from the end of July, 2009:

CF's ongoing investigation says police have two theories as to how the baby died: "First, the child may have had a bad virus and died from complications caused by that. Second, the symptoms match those of blunt force trauma," a report says.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/20...2_1_dcf-o-connor-child-welfare-administrators

I'm still looking for a picture of Bryce, too...
 

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