Hard times put kids at risk, as well as programs to serve them
Posted on Fri, Apr. 18, 2008
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
Florida child welfare administrators are being asked to cut tens of millions of dollars from safety-net programs for vulnerable children at a time when kids may be at greater risk.
Calls to the state's child-abuse hot line were up 17 percent in March over the previous year. Florida's economy is widely believed to be in recession, and reports of child abuse and neglect have been shown to rise during periods of economic hardship.
But lawmakers are considering deep cuts to the very programs run by the Department of Children & Families and other agencies that support struggling families or enable the state to determine which children are most endangered.
As lawmakers confer over details, about $1 billion in social service and healthcare reductions are likely. Cuts to children's services, which would total more than $100 million, already have had an effect: They have convinced a Miami-Dade County foster mom that she won't be able to afford to adopt the severely disabled child she has cared for over the past six years.
''We don't have money -- that's all you hear. We don't have money,'' said Kim Rowe, 48, a legal secretary who took 7-year-old Courtney in six years ago when her parents' chronic drug abuse led to serious neglect. Rowe has been struggling ever since to provide for the girl, who has severe cerebral palsy and mental retardation and cannot eat without a feeding tube.
''These cuts are going to be absolutely devastating,'' said Broward Circuit Judge John A. Frusciante, who has presided over child welfare cases for a decade. ``We are sacrificing the future for what is perceived to be an emergency at the moment. It will come back to haunt us.'' [Read more…]
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