The Florida Senate's Committee on Children and Families is moving forward with a sweeping measure that aims to improve the state's child welfare system.
This comes as lawmakers unanimously approved the measure, which has a strong backer in Senate President Ben Albritton. Some of the proposal's many components include the establishment of a four-year foster care pilot program.
Florida's Child Welfare System
This program will be designed particularly for kids with complex mental health needs and place them with specifically trained foster families. The committee chair, Vero Beach Republican Sen. Erin Grall, presented the bill to his colleagues on the opening day of the session.
She said they observed a decrease in the overall number of children removed from their homes and placed in out-of-home care. Grall noted that this has coincided with an increase in the needs of those particular children.
The proposed bill also tries to prevent children who have complicated behavioral needs from being placed into households that are not properly equipped to care for them. These kinds of situations typically result in a long trail of busted placements and the children having a long record of rejection, according to WUSF.
Grall said that there are not enough placements adequately serving high-acuity children. She noted that the proposed bill requires the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to create a treatment foster care pilot program that would increase family-like placements for these types of children.
The proposal also addresses a critical condition by including a professional foster care family designation. The state's DCF will create and oversee this designation, and the families involved will receive higher pay.
Getting More People To Work
The bill, known as SPB 7012, features a program to attract more people who have previously worked in public safety. Grall added that case managers and child protective investigators are critical components of the child welfare system, MSN reported.
She added that the proposed bill assists the state of Florida in recruiting retired law enforcement officers, emergency first responders, military servicemembers, teachers, and others who have specific training and skills that benefit vulnerable children in state care.
Another benefit of the proposal is that it would allow the DCF to collect more data about where children are placed so that they could be protected from commercial sexual exploitation. Albritton said that the program does not replace the role of family, as per WFSU.
