Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

We received an email from Alvin Wolfe:

The Times editorial, “A foster care challenge” (Nov 10) demands comment.

Both the Times and DCF Secretary Butterworth seem to blame the people of Pinellas County for the failures of the child welfare system. Butterworth says: “we don’t have the people here taking ownership in the child welfare system.”

In fact, under the leadership of Governor Jeb Bush and legislators Sandra Murman and Ginny Brown Waite, the legislature of 1998 privatized the system, effectively removing it from the people’s “ownership.” Then, in 2000, that separation of the system from the community was effectively sealed by the legislature’s abolition of all the local district health and human services boards that had been composed of citizens appointed by the county commissions. Freed from local control, the new privatized system was nonetheless labeled “community-based care.” The legislature ordered the establishment of “community alliances” but gave those alliances neither funds nor, worse, any authority to influence the DCF regarding state contracts.

Having been an active participant in trying to save some semblance of local control, some of us former members of the Statewide Health and Human Services Board, including Dr. David Buby from Pinellas County, organized the Florida Health and Human Services Board, Inc We are still fighting this uphill battle to help communities toward some involvement in what is disingenuously called “community-based care.”

The Times editorial mentions the Florida Coalition of Children as a potentially positive influence in “community-based care.” That coalition is a corporation composed of lead agencies and service providers. It in no way represents community interests. Their inner workings and policies are available only to members, and membership is expensive. Annual dues run from $10,000 to $25,000, those costly dues considered a cost of doing business, paid for out of the public funds allocated in their state contracts. Remember, almost all of these lead agencies around the state are new corporations established uniquely for the purpose of getting the lead agency contracts. That was true also of Sarasota Family YMCA, established separately so as not to risk assets of the traditional “Y.”

So far as I know, there is only one statewide advocacy organization that is truly independent of the current privatized system. That remains the Florida Health and Human Services Board, Inc. (http://www.fhhsb.org). Check it out.

Alvin W. Wolfe, Ph.D.
Chair, Florida Health and Human Services Board, Inc.

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