DCF Hosts DeSantis at Orlando Summit as $70 Million in Claims Loom Over Agency

ORLANDO, FL—The Department of Children and Families hosted Gov. Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis at its annual summit in Orlando to discuss the leaps and bounds the government has made toward protecting vulnerable Floridians.

The part that wasn't mentioned? The potential increase in DCF failures statewide.

While the Governor has allocated billions to DCF to help out struggling families, the agency's apparent negligence—as found in a number of recent jury cases—has caused children to be placed in dangerous homes with little to no intervention. That's why DCF is the subject of more claims bills in the upcoming 2025 Legislative Session than in any other session since its creation in 1996.

Furthermore, Lawmakers are trying to approve almost $70 million from the General Revenue Fund to be doled out to five different children or their guardians, all of whom were placed by DCF into dangerous parental care despite a slew of child abuse complaints insisting they were unsafe.

Of the five children in the bills, all were either severely disfigured, harmed or permanently incapacitated due to DCF negligence, juries found.

"The governor has advocated for and supported the funding increases and policy changes needed to accomplish the transformations we all want to see," said DCF Secretary Shevaun Harris at the Wednesday afternoon event. "Because of this, we have seen a 25% growth, which equates to more than $9.5 billion in funding for Health and Human Services, which translates into increased access to services for some of our most vulnerable."

DeSantis, for his part, allocated $4.6 billion to DCF in the 2024-2025 budget in hopes of assuaging what is becoming an increasing problem. The money will be spent on opioid treatment, families with adopted children (a new $9.3 million initiative creates incentives for adoption), expanding foster care services and preventing human trafficking.

In 2022, USA Today launched an investigation into the agency; discovering that they often made things "significantly worse" for abused children. The Secretary at the time, Chad Poppell, admitted to the paper that DCF had simply "done a bad job," and that they had made the wrong choice "roughly half the time."

USA Today discovered that in fiscal year 2019-2020, 92 children in foster care were reported to DCF over fears that they were being sexually abused. Only six were verified, despite 70% of the allegations being from credible sources.

Poppell resigned in Feb. 2021 before DeSantis appointed him to the Florida Faith-Based and Community-Based Advisory Council a year later. He is now a principal at the KPMG accounting firm.