Florida cuts safety-net programs for children as need for them grows

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.miamiherald.com/466/story/499526.html

Hard times put kids at risk, as well as programs to serve them

Posted on Thu, Apr. 17, 2008

Florida child-welfare administrators are being asked to cut tens of millions of dollars from safety-net programs for vulnerable children at a time when kids may be at greater risk.

Reports of child abuse and neglect rise during periods of economic hardship, studies show. With Florida's economy widely believed to be in recession, calls to the state's child-abuse hot line were up 17 percent in March over the previous year.

But lawmakers are considering deep cuts to the very programs in the Department of Children & Families and other agencies that support struggling families or enable the state to determine which children are most endangered.

The cuts, which would total more than $100 million, have already had an effect: They have convinced a Miami-Dade foster mom that she won't be able to afford to adopt the severely disabled 7-year-old she has cared for over the past six years.

''We don't have money -- that's all you hear. We don't have money,'' said Kim Rowe, 48, a legal secretary who took Courtney in six years ago when her parents' chronic drug abuse led to serious neglect. Rowe has been struggling ever since to provide for the girl, who has severe cerebral palsy and mental retardation and cannot eat without a feeding tube.

''These cuts are going to be absolutely devastating,'' said Broward Circuit Judge John A. Frusciante, who has presided over child welfare cases for a decade. ``We are sacrificing the future for what is perceived to be an emergency at the moment. It will come back to haunt us.''

[NNN0LHI]

1. kick for the desperate

[Crunchy Frog]

2. This is what the people in Florida keep voting for, isn't it?

I don't think people in this country overall have grasped the fact that there is a connection between how they vote, and what happens in their lives. I'm very fearful that this will extend to the upcoming election. :(

[magellan]

3. Also heard on the local news in Orlando tonight

A Repub in our legislature has attached an amendment to a bill that would abolish all fire fees state-wide if passed.

The reason a lot of FL counties have gone to charging fire fees is because after Amendment 1 was passed last year, cutting property taxes, they don't have the budgets to cover all emergency services.

So I don't know what this idiot Attkisson and the morans complaining about fire fees expect. They don't want to pay more taxes that pay for emergency services, and they don't want to pay fire fees. Guess they won't give it another thought until it's THEIR house that burns down.

[Elspeth]

4. As Jeb Bush destroys Florida, we must make sure that

he never ends up in Washington.