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I live in South Florida and up until 2 years ago I worked for the Department of Children and Families, I happen to be familiar with the caseworker that had this case, or at least I have seen her around. She's been asked to resign as well as her supervisor. You know there are alot of people to blame in this incident. The mother for one, just because your child (4 of them actually) got taken away from you four years ago, why the heck haven't you been maintaining contact with them and visiting them at least? Now she comes back with her fake tears talking about she's suing the state. The grandmother for one should have been more proactive with the case of her grandchildren. She should have notified someone that her grandchildren aren't being probably supervised by their caseworker, this caseworker most likely wasn't doing her job from the jump. She (grams) should have been complaining that no one was coming to see about the children and even after someone "supposedly" came and took the girl away a year ago, I would think as her family you would want to still maintain visitation rights and contact with the child, so how the heck do you not know where she was taken to? Lastly, the problem with DCF, and thats in no way to make excuses for this caseworker, is the fact that they pile on a ridiculous amount of cases on you and expect you to effectively manage the lives of all these children and their families. You're not helping these families you end up just simply running around putting bandaids on their problems. Sometimes behind your back they do send PI's (Protective Investigators) to a foster home and remove a child who is on your caseload from that home without informing you. BUT that's why if you are doing your required monthly visits there, you'll find out about it regardless. You can get cases where one family consist of 10 children who have all been put into the system and split into several different foster homes because there's no way to keep them together, now imagine having over 100 kids on your case load including their parents, extended family members etc and having to go to court on their behalf, to their schools, to the doctor, and whatever other thing that is required of you since they are wards of the state, it's like you're their mother and father..you are responsible for every child on your caseloads life and if you have more than you can handle things tend to crumble rapidly. DCF is a mess and they have a high employee turn over, burn out rate, etc. They need to revamp that whole organization so things like this won't happen because it isn't the first time and it won't be the last. It could be possible that grandma gave the kid back to her mom a year ago, cause they do that..personally I think this little girl is dead and its a shame. This caseworker most likely not only was neglecting this one case but probably several of her other cases, so imagine how many children are out there that weren't being properly supervised by the state. She isn't the only caseworker that goes for months at a time without seeing her clients. I also don't understand how being that as caseworkers we had to go to court regularly to speak to the judge on behalf of our clients and give reports on the progress or lack thereof of the family, how the judge didn't realize what was happening...from what I hear this girl was forging visitation documents...
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