State seeks foster care bids for Pinellas and Pasco

The state is "leaning toward" seeking new bids for foster care services in Pinellas and Pasco counties, rather than automatically extending its contract with the Sarasota Family YMCA, a state official said today.

Earlier, a top Sarasota YMCA official said a decision to do so had already been made.

That is not the case, said George Sheldon, assistant secretary for the state Department of Children and Families, although DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth is leaning in that direction.

Sarasota Family YMCA president and chief executive Carl Weinrich has said that his agency would bid for the contract again, if necessary.

A state review called for serious and immediate steps to be taken to stabilize the foster care system in Pinellas County.

The review's report said the system suffers from high turnover among case workers, large case loads and a sense of crisis among front-line workers.

The review team was created because of a perception that the Sarasota YMCA had become a highly paid but poorly performing agency that had recently made serious mistakes in its handling of two foster children, one of whom died and another who disappeared.

Melanie Ave, Times staff writer

Comments

The state won't get any decent providers as long as they don't pay enough to adequately cover the costs of providing the services - this is one area where privatization has utterly failed and the state needs to provide the services and hire licensed social workers rather than anyone with a little bit of college to work with these kids.

Also, the concept of foster care itself is pretty much a failure. The state needs to create, adequately fund, and monitor group homes and group communities.

[frank]

and in 2 or 3 years we will be reading about the "short comings" of whatever agency takes over. it's time for a different approach.

[Joseph]

It is even beginning to appear to those among us that are not experts, that as long as DCF (politicians) are a part of the equation, nothing will work. All they did with privatization is find a place to shift the blame. I don't know why people choose this work, but thank God they do.

[JILL]

In any scenario there is going to be complaints in the kind of work that attempts to take care of children at risk. What needs to be done to lighten case loads for case workers to move forward to better cover case loads is more administrative help needs to be hired to handle some of the repetitious but necessary paperwork to take some pressure of the case managers to be all to the paper work and children.

[MC]

What needs to be done about this situation is that the funding for a case manager position needs to be increased so that their job performance is substantial. Case managers do not get paid very well and there is a lot that goes into the job; 50-60 hour work weeks, being on call, dealing with non-cooperative parents, driving all over the place, attending court hearings not to mention, piles upon piles of paperwork. It is not the organization that should be the subject of ridicule but the sources of where the funding comes from because if there were better benefits and better salaries, then there may not be as much turnover in this field.

Before you critcize, spend a day in the life of a case manager. Think you can do 80 hours of work in a 40 hour week,not to mention the emotions a case worker experiences on a daily basis, this is not a job, it's a career of committment to do what parents won't do. The list is long, so if you think you have the solution or want to make a difference in the life of a child, we welcome you.