FL - State's new computers have lost track of some foster children

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Y2K discussion group : One Thread

FL - State's new computers have lost track of some foster children By Sally Kestin and Megan O’Matz Sun-Sentinel

June 6, 2002

A massive new computer system that is supposed to keep track of every child in state care is missing information on some children altogether and has inaccurate data on others.

The Department of Children & Families put a plan in place this week to address the problems, days after missing a deadline to visit more than 46,000 in state care. The review was ordered by Gov. Jeb Bush last month after the agency lost track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson of Miami.

To identify and locate all children, agency officials had to go to paper files and other records, which also are incomplete, raising fresh doubts about the accuracy of the review.

“I don’t have confidence that [the review] is valid or meaningful,” said state Rep. Nan Rich, D-Weston, a member of the children’s committee. “It raises the question of the safety of the children. I don’t think we’re any closer to answering that.”

Agency officials met in a teleconference Wednesday and set deadlines to ensure that the computer system, called HomeSafenet, has accurate information on all children. The top priority, to be completed by June 21, is to identify “the right kids” by cross-checking other records and databases, according to documents obtained by the Sun-Sentinel.

The second priority is to ensure the system has “the right locations” for the children.

“The bottom line here is there are 46,000 some children, we believe, under the legal jurisdiction of this department,” Jack Levine, president of the Center for Florida’s Children, said in an interview. “We don’t know how many children are unknown or unverified.”

Behind schedule

HomeSafenet has been touted by state officials as the solution to Florida’s troubled child protection system. Originally scheduled to be completed in 1998, the computer system will not be finished until 2005, and the total cost has grown from $32 million to more than $230 million.

The computer system is supposed to provide a single source of information about children in state custody.

Each of the 15 DCF districts began using the computer by last fall and were to have entered all children under state care into the system.

But state officials have found that HomeSafenet does not “accurately reflect the true numbers of clients and cases,” according to documents prepared for the teleconference.

Some children are entered twice; others are missing. The system has inconsistent information about the location of children, according to the documents.

The discrepancies made the task of identifying and counting the children difficult.

In the 11-county region based in Gainesville, the DCF district received a list of children generated by the computer system and then found 35 others who were not on it, said spokesman Tom Barnes.

“We’re confident we have identified all the kids in the district,” he said. “We don’t claim perfection, but we think we have done the job correctly.”

In Orlando, DCF officials obtained names of children from every worker “to make sure we didn’t miss anyone,” said spokeswoman Yvonne Vassel.

In Tampa, the agency went to “every worker and every worker’s office and every worker’s desk and every worker’s list,” said Chris Card, executive director of Hillsborough Kids, a private agency providing foster care services in the area.

Jack Moss, DCF district administrator in Broward County, and David May, administrator in Palm Beach County, declined to answer questions, saying through spokeswomen that they are under orders from Tallahassee not to speak to reporters without permission.

Bernard Perlmutter, director of the University of Miami’s Youth Law Clinic, deemed the department’s methodology “primitive.”

“What if a worker was missing on the day they went looking?” he asked. “It’s really unconscionable that DCF has such an utterly untrustworthy system to even know who their children are and where they are.”

Files unreliable

Relying on workers’ case files is not foolproof.

Rilya Wilson’s case appeared to fall into an abyss. No caseworker claimed responsibility for it for 15 months, during which the girl vanished. And, in Lake County, a company hired by DCF to clear backlog abuse investigations told a state legislative committee this week that it found children’s files tossed in trash cans and hidden in office ceilings.

DCF officials in Tallahassee did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the problems with HomeSafenet.

People familiar with the system have said that inaccuracies discovered in the system can be linked to how cumbersome and time-consuming HomeSafenet is to use.

In a May 2001 survey by Florida State University, workers who responded anonymously said the system was slow and frequently malfunctioned.

“The system in general is too complex,” wrote one worker. “My Federal Income taxes were easier to complete this year than the simplest [HomeSafenet] case!!!”

DCF’s review of each child in state care was supposed to be finished by last Friday. But as of Monday, the agency still had not seen 1,237 children, including runaways, children who were thought to have been abducted by a parent or relative, and youngsters who were placed with families out of state.

More than 250 of the children were not seen because the department ran out of time. Those children are supposed to be visited by Friday.

DCF workers and private agencies dealing with children under state care are now under orders to be sure all children’s records are entered accurately into HomeSafenet. Beginning July 1, the computer system will be the “official caseload listing” for children in state care and will be used to determine the agency’s budget.

Link

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2002


Moderation questions? read the FAQ