Miami Herald - We Must do Better for Children in Welfare System

News Article

By Representative Fredrica Wilson

From the time that I first began my service as a lawmaker in Florida, child welfare has been one of my top priorities.

The memory of children who have died from abuse and neglect or have gone missing, like Rilya Wilson, a 4-year-old who went missing from my district in 2001, are constant reminders of how important it is that we do everything we can to protect children.

It's why I introduced the Rilya Wilson Act in Congress last year. The law is designed to protect foster children and to ensure every state has a procedure in place to promptly report their disappearance. One thing is clear, we must do everything we can to do a better job of protecting children.

While challenges remain for Florida's child welfare system, I believe we also have much to celebrate. That's why I am joining some of my colleagues from the Congressional Foster Care Caucus for a roundtable discussion in Miami on March 30 where we will assess the state of the child welfare system and the benefits and challenges of the community-based care system in South Florida.

As a member of the Florida Legislature, I worked closely with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) and community-based care providers to transition Florida from a public to a private, community focused child welfare system.

Since this system was created there have been vast gains in many categories including increased adoption rates, improved monitoring of children and families and greater availability of higher quality core services -- including health care and education -- for children. All of this has been done at lower cost than before the system was privatized.

And the system has worked. Over the past decade we have seen Florida's child welfare system improve from one of the worst in the nation to one of the best. So much so that Florida was the first state to be granted a federal waiver for how its federal child welfare funds can be spent which has enhanced the partnership between the state government and the network of local non-profits, promoting innovation and problem solving.

However, this waiver is now in jeopardy and we must fight to preserve it. We must continue to ensure Florida's community-based care system has the support needed to continue its innovative programs and services that have helped the state become a national leader in child welfare programs.

None of this would be possible without the men and women who work to ensure the success of our system, which is why in 2008, when I was a member of the Florida Senate, I helped create Child Welfare Professionals Day, to promote awareness of the child welfare system and the men and women who work every day to ensure children's safety and security.

I helped create these initiatives and wrote the Rilya Wilson Act to support our child welfare system and its workers and to ensure that other states learn from Florida's successes -- and that we all come together to continue improving child welfare throughout the country.

To this day, I have not forgotten Rilya, and I never will. As a state and as a country we must do better. We must protect all children just as we would protect our own.

Rep. Fredrica Wilson is a Democrat representing District 17, which includes northern Miami-Dade and southeastern Broward counties.

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