Florida
FLORIDA
Susan K. Chase
Data Support Administrator
Family Safety and Preservation
Florida Department of Children and Family Services
1317 Winewood Boulevard
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0700
(850) 922-2195
(850) 488-3748 Fax
susan_chase@dcf.state.fl.us
Item 1.1: These data exclude public awareness campaigns. July through December data for Palm Beach were estimated. The numbers may be low due to incomplete reporting by Miami.
Numbers include families that received services (carryover and new) in the reporting period and children in the families that received services, without regard to funding sources. If a parent received services, e.g., parent education and training, all children in the family were identified as children served. Children cannot be served without the family being served. For example, if a child attended an after-school tutoring program, one child and one family were served. When one of the children in the family received a direct service but the parent did not receive a direct service, siblings were not counted as receiving a service. The family was still counted.
Of the children and families identified as receiving preventive services, information and referral accounted for 57,296 children and 36,967 families.
These services may include but are not limited to after school enrichment/recreation; child care/therapeutic care; community facilitation; community mapping/development; counseling/mentoring services; crisis and intervention services; delinquency prevention; developmental screening/evaluation; domestic violence services; family resource or visitation center/full-service schools; Healthy Families America; Healthy Start; home visiting/in-home parent education/parent support; information and referral; parenting education and training; prenatal/perinatal services; Project Safety Net; respite care/crisis nursery; self-help groups/support groups; teen parent/pregnancy program.
Item 2.1: All reports received alleging child maltreatment (according to Florida law) are accepted and require a CPS investigation. This count includes initial and additional reports. It also includes some "special conditions" reports that did not constitute abuse or neglect but required a protective response, e.g., parent hospitalized or incarcerated.
An initial report is the first report received at the hotline alleging maltreatment of a child by a parent, adult household member, or person responsible for the childs welfare. An initial abuse report always requires the commencement of a new investigation.
An additional report is a report to the central abuse hotline by the same or different reporter, received after the initial report, which adds new allegations of maltreatments; new incidents of the same maltreatments contained in the initial report; additional alleged victims or alleged perpetrators if they relate to the initial report; or subsequent information alleging that the immediate safety or well-being of the alleged victim(s) is threatened, thereby changing the investigation response time from a 24-hour response to an immediate response. An additional report requires additional investigative activity.
Item 2.2: Numbers include initial and additional reports as described in Item 2.1. They do not include subsequent reports by different reporters in which no additional information was provided.
"Other" includes attorney, spiritual healer, guardian ad litem, guardian, human rights advocacy committee, client relations coordinator, or other.
Item 2.3: The numbers include investigations closed in calendar year 1997, and thus may include reports received in a prior year. Investigations closed includes only initial investigations (see Item 2.1, above). Although one or more additional reports may be received during the course of investigating an initial report, the whole report is closed together as one closure when all investigative activity is concluded.
The number for intentionally false is suspected to be under-reported (this also applies to 3.2).
"Other Dispositions" includes Special Conditions (5,881), No Jurisdiction (433), Family Services Response System cases whose findings were not entered into the computer system (2,092), and missing data (3).
Item 3.1: This number includes only children alleged to be victims, not other children in the household. It includes children in reports received during the year. It is duplicated, i.e., it counts each child for each report in which he was an alleged victim.
Item 3.2: This number includes only children alleged to be victims, not other children in the household. It includes children in reports closed during the year. It is not unduplicated, but counts each child for each report in which he was an alleged victim (also applies to 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 7.4).
"Other Dispositions" includes Special Conditions (7,444), No Jurisdiction (552), and Family Services Response System cases whose findings were not entered into the computer system (4,079).
Item 3.3: These numbers include children who received or continued to receive services after the investigation, and also children who received out-of-home placement services (shelter or relative) during the investigation.
Item 3.5: These numbers are based on Interim Placement and include children placed out-of-home (shelter or relative) during the course of the investigation.
Item 4.1: These numbers include only children found to be victims, not other children in the household. Child victims in these figures have been substantiated (State finding of verified) or indicated (State finding of some indication). They include children in reports closed during the year (also applies to 4.2, 4.3, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, 4.8). While reports are duplicated, counting each child for each applicable category, the same child is counted no more than once for each maltreatment category, regardless of how often he was reported during the year.
The majority in "Other" are Threatened Harm. "Other" also includes these maltreatments when they are coded as abuse rather than neglect: substance or alcohol exposed child (these are not included in "Medical Neglect"), substance misuse (allowing or encouraging a child to use alcohol or drugs), poisoning, abandonment, inadequate food, and malnutrition (all small numbers of cases). If coded as neglect, all the preceding would be included in "Neglect or Deprivation of Necessities."
Item 4.2: These numbers are unduplicated, counting each child only once regardless of how often he was reported during the year (also applies to 4.3 and 4.5).
Item 4.5: A child victim does not appear in more than one category.
Item 4.6: These numbers are duplicated, counting each child for each report in which he was a victim (also apples to 4.7 and 4.8).
Services tracked for this item include, but are not limited to, Intensive Crisis Counseling, Family Builders (included starting July 1997), Voluntary Family Services, Protective Supervision, Substitute Care, Post-Placement Supervision, and Adoption Services. A family identification number was used to determine if any other family member of the child had received such services, as well as tracking history for the child in question (also applies to 5.3).
Item 4.7: This item includes reunification with parents, legal guardians, and other relatives following foster care. It does not include children returned home after an out-of-home placement during a prior investigation where that out-of-home placement was not continued after investigation. It does not include reunification with parent/guardian after a relative placement that was not licensed or paid as foster care.
Item 4.8: This item includes children who either had judicial involvement through a shelter hearing and/or a dispositional hearing.
Item 5.1: This number includes fatality victims in reports closed during the year, whose date of death may have been in a prior year. It includes verified abuse/neglect deaths only. The finding is verified when a preponderance of the credible evidence results in a determination that death was the result of abuse or neglect (also applies to 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4).
Items 5.2: In this question, foster care includes out-of-home placement during a prior investigation, relative placement that was not licensed or paid as foster care, or licensed foster care.
Item 5.4: Reunification includes children returned home after an out-of-home placement during a prior investigation where that out-of-home placement was not continued after investigation. It includes reunification with parent/guardian after a relative placement that was not licensed or paid as foster care.
Item 6.1: This item includes caretakers found to be responsible for abuse/neglect in reports closed during the year. Figures are duplicated, counting each caretaker for each victim, for each report in which that caretaker/victim pair occurs.
Floridas relatively low perpetrator/victim ratio may be the result of the fact that a victim may be substantiated without necessarily identifying a perpetrator. That is, substantiation may be based on "some credible evidence," but the naming of a perpetrator (as opposed to an alleged perpetrator) depends on a "preponderance of evidence."
"Child Day Care Providers" include only baby sitters. Day care staff are included in "Residential Facility Staff."
Item 7.1: This number includes "call floor" counselor FTEs (93), hotline supervisor FTEs (13), protective investigation field staff (797), and protective investigation field unit supervisors (152). These numbers were based on allocated staff as of December 31, 1997, exclusive of vacancies, overtime, and temporary staff. Hours worked were not tracked. ("Call floor" counselors and hotline supervisors also receive reports of adult abuse, neglect, and exploitation, which represents about 20 percent of their workload.)
Item 7.2: This number includes the call floor counselors and hotline supervisors listed in 7.1 above.
Item 7.3: This number includes investigations closed in CY97 and may include reports received in a prior year. The response commenced when the CPS investigator or other designated responder attempted the initial face-to-face contact with the victim. The system calculates the number of minutes from the "Received Date and Time" to the "Commencement Date and Time." The minutes for all cases were averaged and converted to hours. An initial on-site response is conducted immediately in situations in which any one of the following allegations is made:
- A childs immediate safety or well-being is endangered;
- The family may flee or the child will be unavailable within 24 hours;
- Institutional abuse or neglect is alleged unless the facility is not operating at the time the report is received. When the institution is not operating and the child cannot be located, i.e., neither the childs whereabouts nor home address is known, the investigation must commence immediately on the program resuming operation;
- An employee of the department has allegedly committed an act of child abuse or neglect directly related to the job duties of the employee, or when the allegations otherwise warrant an immediate response as specified in statute or policy;
- A special condition referral for emergency services is received; or
- The facts otherwise so warrant.
All other initial responses must be conducted with an attempted on-site visit with the child victim within 24 hours.
Item 7.4: Because service provision may start for different children on different dates, the average for this item was based on children, not reports. This figure includes only children alleged to be victims, not other children in the household. All dispositions were included except Dismissed, Custody Relative-No Protective Services, Custody Non-Relative-No Protective Services, Other Judicial, Unable to Locate, Moved After Contact, No Services Needed, Closed After Assessment, and Services Offered But Rejected.
The number of days was calculated for each child from the receipt of the report alleging maltreatment of the child to the court hearing ordering services or continued services, or to the voluntary agreement to services or continued services. This did not include services provided during the course of the investigation such as emergency removal, continued ongoing services, or early services intervention (in which an ongoing services worker was involved in the case during investigation in anticipation of services that will be provided post-investigation).
