an appeal for open records

Yes, I know. Confidentiality is important when it comes to mental health patients, families in crisis and so forth.

But when it comes to taking a child into your home, whether through adoption or foster care, you ought to have information from the child’s background that will allow you to make rational decisions.

We have, yet again, another situation in which an adoptive parent is attempting to relinquish parental rights because the child is so damaged he presents a danger to others in the family.

Last October, Pinellas County school board member Nancy Bostock and her husband took that anguishing course.

Ronda Gary-Jackson of Tampa is walking that tortuous path now.

In both instances, the child was violent toward a family member. Bostock’s son towards her. Gary-Jackson’s son, Hershel, beat and raped a mentally challenged woman who lived in the home.

Florida foster care is rife with stories about children placed in families who were ignorant of the child’s background. That means the child doesn’t get the treatment he or she needs – and the family is often placed in an untenable situation which results in heartbreak for them and further damage to the child.

Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Bob Butterworth is working hard to provide more transparency for foster and adoptive parents, but it can’t come soon enough. There are other Hershel’s in homes around the state.

We haven’t been interested in providing high quality mental health care for these broken children. At least we should warn the families who care for them that these kids come with an enormous amount of baggage.