DCF in Florida makes an odd move...removes age 16 mother from her mother's home.

madfloridian

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Thu Jul-26-07 12:22 AM
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DCF in Florida makes an odd move...removes age 16 mother from her mother's home.

It seems like there was no real reason to do it. Admittedly their family life is not the best, according to the article....but yanking the young mother out to place her and her baby in unknown circumstances seems overkill for smelling marijuana in the home.

They admit the house was clean, the baby was loved and cared for...but they did it anyway. I wonder about their priorities.

Family Has Plan - Until DCF Arrives

State agency says 16-year-old mother can't live with her own mother.

RICK RUNION/The Ledger
Tiffany Theis, 16, holds her newborn baby Savanah in Lakeland recently. Tiffany was counting on support from her mother to help raise the child, but the Department of Children and Families removed Tiffany and Savanah from their home.

It's a complicated case, but they should have left her in her mother's home.

She became pregnant and gave birth in late June to her daughter, Savanah.

"I always loved babies and I knew I could raise one," she said in an interview a day before her plans fell into chaos. In raising Savanah, she counted on help from her mother, with whom she, her biological father, three brothers and one of the brother's girlfriends live. But the Department of Children and Families removed Tiffany and Savanah from the home at 10 p.m. Thursday.

..."Which is the best course for Tiffany and her baby? Leave them in the home under DCF supervision? Or bring Tiffany back into the uncertainty of the foster care system, which she has experienced before, and start Savanah on the same path?

It's a balancing act the department faces daily. Many decisions its workers make have the potential for disaster.

Complicated, but nothing that warrants removal to strange circumstances. The mother reported the older man as father as soon as she knew, the daughter had not told her the father. But DCF said that was not enough...even though she did not know.

DCF had been at the family's trailer earlier that week to inspect the living situation. The house wasn't dirty, DCF worker Sloan Paton-Jean-Baptiste said Friday, adding that the baby was loved and taken care of.

But did Jones do enough to protect Tiffany from sexual abuse, which is how the law sees her involvement with an adult man? Tiffany said she initially told her mother someone close to her age was the father. Jones told DCF she reported the 24-year-old man as the father after the baby was born.

Florida's DCF has a very poor history. I still remember Rilya Wilson, never found, and a 15 year old girl killed living with an older man after DCF signed off on her after 4 years...then ignored warnings from her family she was missing.

A caretaker for Rilya Wilson, the foster child whose disappearance four years ago exposed serious flaws in Florida's child-welfare system, was indicted Wednesday on charges of murdering the girl, who was 4 years old when she vanished. The caretaker, Geralyn Graham, was also charged with kidnapping and aggravated child abuse. Rilya's body has never been found.

Florida DCF mistake proved fatal for 15 year old girl.

But even as Department of Children & Families investigator Williams R. Ajayi moved on to his next case, Stephanie, a slim girl with a glowing smile, was already in peril. On April 10, a day before DCF closed its case, a counseling group assigned to work with the family told Ajayi that the teen had run away from home...."Records show Ajayi did nothing. With no open investigation, no one searched for the troubled teenager.

Much of the system here is privatized with little real oversight. Bob Butterworth, a very moderate Democrat is heading the agency now. He has his hands full, but he believes in the complete privatizing of the agency.

And the children and families pay the price.