TAMPA, Fla. — Starting this week, for the first time in decades, all child welfare investigations are now handled by the Florida Department of Children and Families.
For years, seven counties handled these investigations on a county level through the sheriff's office. In the Tampa Bay area, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, and Hillsborough counties all recently transferred their cases and some of their investigators to the state.
Seminole and Manatee counties were the last to transition their workload to the state department last week.
10 Tampa Bay's Malique Rankin requested interviews with the four Tampa Bay sheriff's offices impacted. All of them declined interview requests, deferring to DCF.
This led 10 Tampa Bay to reach out to DCF two weeks ago, requesting an interview regarding this transition. We're still waiting to hear back.
Former DCF Secretary Mike Carroll spoke exclusively to 10 Tampa Bay, giving insight into the impact the transition of thousands of cases and hundreds of investigators can have.
Carroll now works as the executive vice president of Luther Services Florida. He spent 29 years at DCF, more than four of those years spent as the department secretary overseeing operations. He worked with DCF in the late 90s when the department began transitioning some of its cases to county sheriff's offices. Manatee County was first.
"Well, there were some high-profile child deaths at the time," Carroll explained. "And there were some other cases too, that weren't necessarily deaths. But they were cases that resulted in some pretty significant consequences for the kids involved in that case.
"And when you took a hard look at the work behind those cases, there were some decisions made and some investigatory work done that didn't fill people with confidence."
Now, as the state is in its first week of managing all child welfare cases, anticipated obstacles are expected with new case managers, new investigators and a heavier workload.
"It's not going to be easy, they're going to have some challenges with workload, particularly early," Carroll said. "But that's true of any transition. The bigger challenges down the road, are going to be maintaining the credibility and trust that the sheriff's [offices] had built over the past 20 to 25 years in the community, and then re-establishing the institutional knowledge and expertise at the level that the sheriff had it with their staff."
Some of the child protective investigators have transferred to the state department from the sheriff's offices. While it may seem minor that only seven of Florida's 67 counties are impacted by this transition, those seven counties make up more than 25 percent of the state's child population.
"Whenever you have high caseloads, and you have high periods of turnover, it has the potential to impact the quality work," Carroll said. "Absolutely, for sure. I think the Department is trying to do everything they can to mitigate it by bringing in resources from other parts of the state. And these are experienced folks that work in these investigations."
Carroll shared the confidence he has in the department managing this transition smoothly, but acknowledged, even if you do everything right, sometimes something can still go horribly wrong.
"I mean, in the short term, can things fall through the cracks? Sure," he said. "And I think the department is doing everything they can to make sure that doesn't happen. Is that a heightened possibility during times like this? Yes."
"I will tell you, I don't think there's anybody in this process, that wouldn't be a little bit nervous," he continued. "If you care at all about kids and families. It would, you know, and I'm sure the Secretary is a little bit nervous about it. Because even though they put a plan in place to mitigate some of the challenges that we talked about, in our work. things sometimes happen that you can't control."
The department says it has approximately 1,600 child protective investigation positions throughout the state. Currently, 147 CPIs from sheriff's offices in the impacted counties accepted positions with the department, in addition to 320 new employees who were recently onboarded as a part of the transition.
Turnover for CPIs remains high, often attributed to the nature of the cases investigators manage. The turnover rate for CPIs in Fiscal Year 2022-2023 was 64 percent compared to 71 percent in FY 2021-2022.
"So when I look at turnover, I don't look at turnover in general, because I don't expect folks to do this for a lifetime," Carroll said when explaining the training that goes into case managers and investigators for child welfare cases. "But what I do look for is turnover within that first two years. because you've got to get a person into that second year, so they feel comfortable, and they're effective, and you really get your bang for your buck. And we tend to lose some folks in that first year.
"So turnover is important because you need to keep the right amount of people on the ground. But there's also a delay just because you hire someone to fill another position, they can immediately go into that position, they have to go through that training period."
Carroll said now, DCF will have to earn the trust and confidence of the communities now impacted by this transition. New relationships will also have to be built by DCF investigators and county sheriff's offices managing the criminal investigations aspect of these cases.
"So it's really critical that you forge a pretty strong relationship between law enforcement and the PI function," Carroll said. "That's easier to do when it's housed under one roof when sworn law enforcement officers report to the sheriff, so does the CPI. And there will always be some tension there because the roles are much different, their focus is much different, their training is much different.
"But it can be more easily managed when it's under one roof. So there's pluses and minuses each way, I do think what the Secretary and the department was looking at, was they were really hoping that in the long term, if you got better outcomes for kids and families, then it was worth the risk and worth the squeeze."
Malique Rankin is a general assignment reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. You can email her story ideas at mrankin@10tampabay.com and follow her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.