DCF to strengthen response to hotline
MIAMI (AP) – Florida social service administrators will strengthen their response to calls for help to the state’s abuse hot line after The Miami Herald reported that thousands of calls each month are being “screened out” and not forwarded for investigation.
In an e-mail to top administrators at the Department of Children & Families, the agency’s family safety director is ordering hotline calls not sent over to an investigator to be “triaged” by caseworkers within 48 hours.
Referrals from the hotline to prevention workers will be “reviewed and assessed for action within 24 hours of being accepted by the hot line,” and could result in further investigation, DCF Family Safety Director Alan Abramowitz wrote Tuesday in a memo that spells out a host of new steps to better protect children and vulnerable adults who are the subject of hot-line calls.
In a meeting with The Herald’s Editorial Board, DCF Secretary George Sheldon said his agency will continue to monitor the screening of calls, as well as the prevention program, both internally and by a group of outside task forces he appointed to help improve child safety.
“Clearly, we’ve got to do a better job,” Sheldon told the board.
On Sunday, The Miami Herald reported that DCF had dramatically stepped up the number of hotline calls that are “screened out” because they do not warrant a full-scale investigation.
Generally, administrators say, calls are passed over because allegations do not meet the statutory definition of abuse, neglect or abandonment.
Agency records show, however, that DCF is screening out allegations of physical or sexual abuse, medical neglect and inadequate supervision of very young children. Calls from judges, social workers, school counselors and hospital workers are among those that have gone without investigation.
In an e-mail to juvenile court judges, private foster-care and adoption workers throughout the state Tuesday, Sheldon took issue with some of the article’s findings. By dramatically ramping up the prevention effort, he said, child welfare administrators are protecting more kids than ever.
“The Herald article may have left an impression about the way we operate the hot line,” Sheldon wrote. “None of the calls cited were ‘turned away’ or ‘rejected’ or ‘unheeded.'”
“I want to emphasize that the changes in hot-line procedures we made last year, which were the subject of the Herald article, are a step in the right direction but must still be improved,” Sheldon added.