Florida Lawmakers Target 'Negligent' DCF With Record $70 Million in Claims Bills
TALLAHASSEE, FL—As Florida lawmakers gear up for the 2025 legislative session in March, the Department of Children and Families' alleged child endangerment will be at the forefront of discussions, with a whopping five of 17 filed claims bills targeting the agency.
Almost $70 million from the state is demanded in these bills.
Breaking a record, this is the first time since DCF's creation in 1996 that it's the subject of more than three claims bills in one year. For 2025, it's the headliner for five—an unfortunately natural progression for the heavily-criticized department, whose call center has the second-longest wait times in the country with up to 48% of calls getting abandoned, Florida Politics reported.
Now, Republican Senators Ana Maria Rodriguez, Joe Gruters, and Alexis Calatayud are trying to approve a staggering $67,023,040 from the General Revenue Fund to be divvied out among five different families via claims bills, which are designed to compensate Floridians harmed by state agencies.
These claims bills are the first and currently only bills of the session, having been filed by the August 1 deadline.
SB 2, the first filed bill of the session, by Miami's Sen. Rodriguez asks that $20 million be appropriated from the state for the relief of C.C., a Fort Myers boy born in 2014 to Anna Highland, a registered foster parent with DCF. In the seven months before and directly after his birth, six complaints were filed alleging that Highland was abusing drugs and a child she was fostering.
DCF still allowed C.C. to leave the hospital with Highland. Two more complaints were filed—both of which were dismissed without investigation—in the following months. At 13 months old, C.C. overdosed on his mother's methadone, was hospitalized for a month, and now, at 9 years old, suffers seizures, strokes, and cognitive impairment, among other things.
Rodriguez seeks to appropriate $20 million from the General Revenue Fund to DCF for the relief of C.C. This is her third time attempting to get the bill over the finish line.
Gruters, who filed two DCF-related claims bills, is trying to allocate a massive $28 million in SB 12 for Sarasota six-year-old L.P. after her mother tried to disembowel her. This happened after family members requested a wellness check on the unnamed mother, who sent a suicide video to relatives.
DCF said L.P. was safe.
Hours later, she was stabbed 14 times. It's estimated that she will incur medical and "psychological costs" for the next 65 years of her life. After a jury found DCF negligent in 2022, they awarded L.P. and her grandparents—her current guardians—$28 million.
In SB 18, also by Gruters, he asks that $14,926,640 be approved for H.H. When the girl was 18 months old, DCF investigated their first child abuse complaint, which alleged that the mother and stepfather were abusing drugs, selling drugs, and "harboring a fugitive". DCF found that the stepfather had been released from the correctional system just seven months prior, had only been seeing the mother for four months, and had been involved in at least 35 criminal issues in ten years.
Even though the stepfather refused to submit to a drug test and the mother tested positive for marijuana, DCF decided H.H. was in "no present danger." This was after they had received a second child abuse complaint, which they did not properly investigate, the bill says.
Two months after the investigation was closed, H.H. was admitted to the hospital with life-threatening injuries and stayed there for 109 days. Now, she can't walk, talk, eat, or sit up.
Sen. Calatayud, who also filed two DCF-related bills, asks in SB 32 that the General Revenue Fund provide $3.8 million to L.E., who tested positive for amphetamines at birth. Two child abuse complaints were filed shortly after her birth—not including the fact that L.E.'s parents got into a "violent altercation" at the hospital the day of her birth—causing DCF to initiate an investigation.
Not only did they discover her mother's drug and criminal history, but both parents had a collective 20 DCF complaints against them in the past. For example: the father fractured his 6-month-old daughter's bones, and that child was removed from his custody. Two of the mother's children had been removed due to "verified child abuse".
DCF found a "present danger" if L.E. stayed with her parents, choosing to place her with the mother's friend. Soon after, the friend told DCF she could not care for L.E., so DCF shockingly put the baby back into her parents' custody.
A month later, L.E. was brought to the hospital—she was seizing, bloodied, and bruised. She was later diagnosed with shaken baby syndrome and malnourishment.
The final DCF claims bill, Calatayud's SB 34, aims to compensate Michael Barnett, the parent of R.B., with $296,400. A man named Patrick Dell was arrested in 2009 for threatening his estranged wife Natasha Whyte-Dell with a knife; he told her he would kill her and ended up flattening her tires.
DCF was notified because Whyte-Dell lived with her five children. They found no "significant risk of harm"—though allegedly were not aware of the 34 times the police department had been called out to the home. Less than a year later, Dell fatally shot Whyte-Dell and four of the children, wounding the fifth by shooting him in the neck.
Dell committed suicide shortly after.
Now, Calatayud is looking to secure Barnett, the father of the fifth child, compensation for DCF's negligence. This is the second attempt to get this bill passed.
With this onslaught of appropriation requests, it remains to be seen if questions on DCF's effectiveness will be raised as the session draws closer. They could not be reached for comment.
https://floridianpress.com/2024/08/florida-lawmakers-target-negligent-dcf-with-record-70-million-in-claims-bills/
