Why would DCF show so much tolerance for alleged abuse in foster care?
Reacting to another such case, a guardian ad litem in Palm Beach County said: “They can t close the homes because they have no place to put the children.” Indeed, the Gievers lawsuit charges that “defendants operate the foster care system with a much greater tolerance for child abuse committed by their own foster parents, group home parents, and institutional personnel than they show toward children neglected or abused by their own parents.” But even that is not the worst of it. In Shadow on the Sunshine State, we documented the impact of foster care panics around the country. We showed how in each case, agency chiefs and politicians promised that massive removal of children would save lives. We documented how, instead, with the system so overwhelmed with children wrongfully taken from their parents, workers had even less time to find children in real danger and total child abuse deaths actually went up. In one sense, Florida did better. Child abuse deaths didn t go up. But they didn t
