I am an attorney that represents parents that have had their children removed from their custody by the Department of Children and Families. In these cases, a judge has made the finding that there was probable casue that the children were at imminent risk of abuse, abandonment or neglect due to the actions or lack of action by their parents.
The process of taking children away from their parents is called "sheltering" the children. There is an effort to place these children with family members; however many of these children are placed in foster care - whether a private home or a group home.
I have been working in this system, the "dependency" system for about 10 years and I will be the first to admit that there are parents who should not be parents. Those parents make up the smallest subset of this group. There are also parents from whom children were taken who should have never been taken and are often quickly returned. Those parents make up an even smaller group.
By far, the largest group of parents are those who could be great parents - if they only had a little help. It is that group of parents that will make up the clientele of the Florida Family Resource Center.
The sheltering of children commences what is often a multi-year effort to reunify the family. Along the way parents become angry, frustrated, disappointed and sometimes they just give up. Much of this is caused by a system that seemingly expects parents to be perfect but fails to provide the necessary assistance to help bring the parents to that point of perfection.
The goal of the Florida Family Resource Center is to assist the parents in obtaining the necessary help that they need while insuring that the Department of Children and Families fulfills its legal obligation to these parents.
This blog is meant to educate the community of this relatively unknown part of our community. The family unit is so important to the strength of the community. In theory, the work of the Department of Children and Families is of utmost importance; however it is in the application of the theory that the system falls short. Little thought seems to be given to how the passage of time effects the relationship between children and their parents when they are not together; but experience tells me that the longer a family stays apart, the harder it is to put them back together.
We all need to work together to first restore these family units and then to work to prevent children from being sheltered at all. When we all work together, it is all possible, after all, it takes a village to raise a parent.
